A Message From
Our Founder
When I founded Unveiling Africa 13 years ago, my ‘simple’ intention was to provide a platform for African youth in diaspora to connect and contribute to the development of the continent, despite their geographical separation.
At the time, I was propelled by the barrage of questions about my country/continent’s history and contemporary issues that I was asked about by Canadians and by how little I came to realize that I knew about Nigeria and Canada. More troubling, was the fact that other African youth had similar complaints of knowing little about their histories. Beyond this, the task of contributing to the development of the continent was not integrated into the academic and social plans of African youth. The purpose of schooling was personal empowerment and acquisition of properties (have money, get a job, buy a car, get married, have children) and not directly about the social transformation of the continent. Africa’s development was just an add on and an after-thought to university education.
Also, there appeared to be a lack of urgency amongst African youth about fixing Africa’s development problem. On the other hand, I found it perplexing to see White Canadians engaging in all sorts of fundraisers to “save” Africa. As an African, it was extremely clear that Africa’s development would never be achieved without the leadership of Africans themselves. Yet, the african education system and socialization processes were not directly engaging and educating African youth to become emotionally connected and meaningfully contribute to the continent’s development starting from their teenage years.
This led to the creation of numerous educational programming in Canada and then the establishment of UVA in Nigeria. UVA’s focus in Nigeria was on teenagers. We wanted to “catch them young” by getting them to see that they have a role to play in Nigeria’s development, giving them a platform to acquire leadership skills and then integrating the development agenda of the country into their academic life. After 10 active years in Nigeria that resulted in the engagement of over 10,000 youth, several insights about Africa’s development and how it will be realized has become clear:
- The continent will not be developed through project based youth activities. For youth to champion the transformation of the continent, it must be integrated into their socialization and education experience from their infant years.
- The measure of academic success must shift beyond proficiency in literacy and numeracy to include mastery of African centered history, cultural grounding and problem solving abilities.
- The vision of Africa’s development must be reconceptualized to be intellectually dependent on Africans as opposed to foreign experts. The vision of development must be responsive to the needs of the people and provide an enabling environment for indigenous knowledge systems to be used for problem solving.
- Africa’s education system plays a critical role in the continent’s development. The education system needs to be radically transformed towards being connected to the immediate lives, histories and knowledge of its citizens. It must be restructured towards problem-solving, critical thinking and innovation.
- People of African heritage, globally, must be united.
Chizoba Imoka-Ubochioma, Ph.D
These lessons inform Unveiling Africa’s new focus. Beyond engaging Nigerian teenagers on the continent, we will continue to capitalize on the internet and designing programming that reasserts the urgency of working with Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems and the need for Africans, globally to be aware of their histories and be united in purpose.
Unveiling Africa has transformed the lives of thousands of teenagers and our teenagers have gone on to be exemplary leaders in their spheres of influence. We are indebted to our volunteers, board members, and sponsors for bringing us so far. We are looking forward to shaping Africa’s development trajectory through African centered capacity building amongst Africans globally.
For Africa to develop and transform herself, her citizens must know who they are, they must be proud of their heritage, intellectually attuned to the needs of the community and world at large, and have the capacity to lead transformatively. Read More
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1/3 Oje Imiavan Street, Allen, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria
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