Black Agriculture and in the 6th Region of the African Union ~ U.S. Black Mayors

HIGH-POWERED DELEGATION FROM THE AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION TO MEET WITH LEADERSHIP OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BLACK MAYORS

NEW YORK, NY – April 14, 2012 - A high-powered delegation from the African Union Commission of the African Union will be meeting with the leadership of the National Conference of Black Mayors on Thursday, April 19, 2012, at the African Hall of the Permanent Observer Mission of the African Union to the United Nations, 305 East 47thStreet, New York, NY.

The African Union Commission delegation will be led by His Excellency Ambassador Erastus Mwencha, Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, and Dr. Jinmi Adisa, Director of the Citizens and Diaspora Directorate of AUC (CIDO).

The two African Union Ambassadors in the United States, His Excellency Ambassador Tete Antonio of the AU Permanent Observer Mission to the UN, and Her Excellency Ambassador Amina Salum Ali of AU Permanent Representative Office to Washington, DC, would also be attending.

The National Conference of Black Mayors, will be led by its President, Hon. Mayor Robert Bowser of East Orange, New Jersey, as well as the Executive Director Ms. Vanessa Williams. About 40 Mayors out of the 682 Black Mayors in the country are expected to attend the meeting. The Black Mayors conference has increasingly been playing a major role in Africa, including their recent World Summit of Mayors meeting in Senegal in December, 2011.

The high-powered meeting is a preparatory meeting to the African Union Global Diaspora Summit on Africa Day, May 25, 2012, in South Africa, to be attended by the Heads of State of the 54 countries that make up the African Union, Presidents and Prime Ministers from the Caribbean countries, as well as Presidents from South America with a sizable percentage of Afro-descendants.

The 17th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union took a significant and dramatic step by deciding to convene the Global African Diaspora Summit on African Day on 25 May 2012 in South African on the Global African Diaspora Process. The decision marked the climax of a protracted consultation process between the African continent and its Diaspora on the goal, content, objectives and implementation strategy of the Diaspora process.

The Decision facilitated the convening of a Ministerial meeting in New York on 24 September 2011 to review the outcomes of a previous Technical Experts meeting as well as the Summit documents of 2007 and consolidate them into a Draft Declaration, Program of Action and Implementation Strategy for the consideration of the leaders of Africa and its Diaspora in the Summit of May 2012. The consolidated outcome documents would then serve as a basic law guiding the program and its effective implementation.

The First Extra-Extra Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2003 adopted a Protocol on Amendment to the Constitutive Act which invited the African Diaspora to participate in the building and development of the Union and the continent as a symbolic 6th Region of Africa, and it is with this in view, that it wants to establish a working relationship with the National Conference of Black Mayors in establishing a grassroots agenda and platform of elected Diaspora leaders in the US to support and work within the framework of the Diaspora Summit agenda.