Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Rowley, expressed his personal interest in fostering collaboration between universities in Africa and TT, as both regions focus on advancing technologies and other disciplines in the 21st century.
During his address at Emancipation Day celebrations on Tuesday morning, Rowley spoke of the importance of understanding and acknowledging African heritage while embracing the potential for future collaboration and exchange.
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“This is a welcome to our long-lost family…the gateway in Medina in the Cape Coast province in Ghana, from which the stolen Africans departed Africa, was called “the door of no return.” Yet we survived and returned to find our ancestral roots to join hands and find common causes with our modern-day brothers and sisters.”
In the marches across the country today, you will see a people, coming out of the legacies of the torturous centuries of slavery, yet standing tall, proudly articulating their roots – a people saying they will not be marginalized, and are evolving in every human way.
“I speak of ‘loss’ because it was a loss calculated over centuries. It was one that forcefully sent millions of African people to this side of the globe, with the vast waters of the Atlantic separating us – disconnecting us from our African ancestry.”
“Recognizing the pain of the Middle Passage, and the centuries of colonial brutality, I salute the African community, a people, who through grit and determination, is on the march, striving for further discovery and self-realization, searching, and transforming themselves for the challenges of the 21st century.”
Finally, he shared that “on both sides of the Atlantic, African people will see the ‘one-ness’ that we carry within us”.
