Guest blog: Africans are rising – we can hold our leaders to account and build a better kind of future
Guest Blog from Kumi Naidoo. Kumi is the launch director of Africans Rising. He is a South African human rights activist and previously the International Executive Director of international environmentalist group Greenpeace. After battling apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s through the Helping Hands Youth Organisation, Naidoo led global campaigns to end poverty and protect human rights. He has served as the secretary-general of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. He was Secretary General of Civicus, an international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. This is republished from the Guardian Red is the colour of the launch, primarily to commemorate the blood that was spilt for the freedom of the peoples of Africa (and reminding our leaders that what is asked of them today is much less than what was asked from leaders in our anti-colonial struggles). Secondly, red signifies that Africa is bleeding its wealth on a daily basis through illicit...