HELP CHEIKH ANTA DIOP* UNIVERSITY
Google search; click translate this page - http://www.ucad.sn/

“Africa’s best universities, the grand institutions that educated a revolutionary generation of nation builders and statesmen, doctors and engineers, writers and intellectuals, are collapsing. It is partly a self-inflicted crisis of mismanagement and neglect, but it is also a result of international development policies that for decades have favored basic education over higher learning even as a population explosion propels more young people than ever toward the already strained institutions.”

“Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling” - New York Times, May 20, 2007

Dakar, Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University (CADU) needs help. City College of New York (CCNY) Corporate Communications recently examined this global challenge, devising solutions the United Nations and government leaders should deploy. This exercise allowed CCNY students to take stock of the value and significance of their “US brand” education—which continues to surpass many countries in quality and content, providing the global currency Americans need to succeed.

Serving as theoretical educational consultants, these CCNY Media Communication Arts (MCA) majors devised brilliant advocacy, fundraising and awareness strategies. Strategies their instructor hopes to ultimately weave into an integrated marketing communications assistance plan, tentatively themed “University Saviors.”

Throughout Africa, despite hardships and limited resources, young people grasp the brass ring of education and pass matriculation exams (US high school equivalent) in record numbers. Once in college, they crowd six deep into dormitory singles and often arrive two to three hours before class, just to get a seat within hearing distance; amplification, audio visual and tech support is virtually non-existent.

Our group challenge: Executives (students) were “on loan” from CCNY, armed with a $12 million budget for 2008. Proposed solutions to attract US corporate and philanthropic support:

> Generate aggressive media awareness campaign

> Create “Bring CADU Back from the Brink Tank” featuring leading corporate philanthropists, entrepreneurs and scholars

> Involve Oprah, Bono/U2, Angelina Jolie, others linked to Africa and education causes

> Stimulate Fortune 500 corporate support

> Start executive management training program

* execs and entrepreneurs work and teach in Senegal

* young African talent ultimately secure internships, work at US corporations, expand US global workforce and perspectives

> Launch donor networks via Facebook and MySpace

> Initiate partnerships between leading government, academic agencies

> Announce environmentally-friendly architectural and interior design competition for new dorms and campus buildings, with CADU/US college students handling construction and management as part of study abroad/exchange programs

> Establish financial accountability/oversight offices in Dakar

And that’s just a sample of more than 30 creative, sustainable concepts! Know this: in the words of “inspirationalist,” Dr. Wayne Dyer, “once an idea is digitized, it ceases to be ephemeral thought and becomes real!”

Ideas initiate momentum. Momentum motivates people. People mobilize to build critical mass. Mass movements bring about change.

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world!”

My brilliant students inspire and motivate me to reach further, dig deeper. This month, I celebrate the sixth anniversary of my cherished trip to the “motherland.” Somehow, I feel my head and heart will soon stretch across the pond to link college students in West Harlem with their comrades in West Africa.

I know you’ll be there to lend a hand. Stay tuned!

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* Considered one of the greatest African scholars of the 20^th Century, Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist and “racialist scientist,” according to Wikipedia. Diop understood the power of perseverance and research. His original thesis—whereby he argued ancient Egypt was a Black African culture—was initially rejected by colleagues at the University of Paris. Over nearly a decade, he reworked and strengthened his evidence and was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1960. Upon his death, the University of Dakar was renamed in his honor.