Dear Friends
The world today is inhabited by over six billion people and about 600 million of these live in Africa. It is saddening however to note that the problems African countries face are not natural but caused by the systems organisation of the world.

On behalf of the African vice presidency of the Humanist International I want to express a message of hope for all peoples.

The progress and prosperity of Africans is hampered by untold and accumulating poverty, diseases like HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, illiteracy and lack of communication.
This poverty is created also by handouts and charity donations which create pasivity and dependency.

Africa is one of the richest continents, much richer than Europe…I mean in terms of natural and human resources. The continent and its people today can boast of unexploited natural resource that could see us into the next century. But unworkable mechanisms imposed by the World Bank and the IMF have made Africans to be blind about the posibilities of the future. They have blinded us with loans taking away our dignity and making us pay 1000 times more.

Today all of Africa cry for its wealth taken away by the greed of colonizers, through the slave trade, ivory, diamonds, gold and other mineral wealth.
Right now most African countries cannot have the benefit of free education, free health facilities, while the problems of abandoned children, orphans, crime and corruption continue to rise.

That is why we as Africans is demanching need to humanize all the peoples and fight the system that creates agony, specially now in Congo through dubious sales of weapons of destruction.

But Independence is coming: humanist parties are developing in the following African countries, namely Algeria, Benin, Mauritius, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Togo, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Tunisia, Congo and Zambia, where I come from.

We envisage in the next few months the organisation of a preparatory congress for the development of the African region of the International.

I appeal to you all from other continents, with vast experience in organisation to help us all to make the spirit of humanism become true.

Mdenteve, Mphanva, Chimwembe

Thank you