CAF in 1st International Meeting of Experts for African Diaspora

Corporación Manos Visibles, CAF’s strategic partner in emerging leadership empowerment issues in Colombia, brought together 25 international and national leaders at the 1st International Meeting of Experts for the African Diaspora, held in Cartagena.

The event was sponsored by the Spanish Agency for Cooperation in Colombia, with the participation of CAF, the IDB and the Ford Foundation, and featured experiences of participating organizations, highlighting their potential and contribution to strengthening African identity and the vindication of African roots from an empowerment and ethnic impact perspective.

“CAF is not only a financial instrument for Latin American development, but also a catalyst for the integration of our countries in the broadest sense of the word: territories, identities and communities with a common interest. Through our operations, we strive to foster local ties and closeness; this has been recognized by our partners as a trademark that distinguishes us from other agencies,” said Emil Rodríguez, institutional development executive at CAF.

Through leadership training programs, CAF actively collaborates in achieving these goals with the Manos Visibles Foundation, our partner on the Economics and Peace School Program, which seeks to empower young women of African descent at risk of exclusion in the Colombian Pacific Area, by building their leadership capacities in economic and territorial development issues.

According to Mercedes Flórez, director of the Spanish Cooperation Training Center in Cartagena, this meeting “is part of the commitment of Spanish Cooperation to strengthen organizational processes of Colombia’s population of African descent and is part of the “Afro-descendant Peoples” thematic axis of the Interconecta Knowledge Transfer, Exchange and Management Plan for the Development of Spanish Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Paula Moreno, president of Manos Visibles, noted that this first meeting was instrumental for the advancement of the Afro-descendant community as “there is power in African and Afro-descendant identity, which is still invisible in terms of communication, economy and effective development. AFROINNOVA showcased multiple practices with an impact that produce effective transformations and help improve living conditions of populations of African descent, which have been marked by exclusion and discrimination.”

The International Decade for People of African Descent, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2015, is an auspicious period in history in which the United Nations, Member States, civil society and all other stakeholders will join Afro-descendants and will take effective steps to implement the activities program in a spirit of mutual recognition, justice and development.

The African diaspora is a true global power, consisting of 1.35 billion people, of which 1.1 billion live in the African continent and approximately 250 million outside Africa. This meeting brought together 20 expert leaders from the African diaspora and representatives of initiatives that advocate for the Afro-descendant community from three continents, from countries such as: Mozambique, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Spain, the United States, Brazil and Colombia, which concentrate the largest number of African and Afro-descendant populations worldwide. 

The event featured Eva Buendía, Head of the Department of Cooperation with Andean and Southern Cone Countries of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID); the regional representative for the Andean Region at the Ford Foundation, Luis Fernando Pérez; Judith Morrison, Senior Gender and Diversity Advisor at the IDB; the regional representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Carmen Maussa; CAF executive Emil Rodríguez; and Javier Ortiz Cassiani, an expert on Afro-descendant issues.

The event featured Eva Buendía, Head of the Department of Cooperation with Andean and Southern Cone Countries of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID); the regional representative for the Andean Region at the Ford Foundation, Luis Fernando Pérez; Judith Morrison, Senior Gender and Diversity Advisor at the IDB; the regional representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Carmen Maussa; CAF executive Emil Rodríguez; and Javier Ortiz Cassiani, an expert on Afro-descendant issues.