On February 21 - 22, 2009, the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) will hold it’s second annual International Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Conference will open with a presentation by African Socialist International (ASI) Chairman Omali Yeshitela, who is credited with keeping alive the vision of Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Garvey for a united prosperous Africa and forging a practical 21st century program for its achievement.

A project of the ASI, AAPDEP organizes African communities to overcome abject poverty and death from curable diseases that is experienced by hundreds of millions of Africans throughout the world, with the establishment of local programs providing sustainable electrification, rainwater harvesting, well-building, water purification, ecological sanitation, farming and community health workers training.

In the year since AAPDEP’s founding conference, it has successfully launched several projects to improve the lives of thousands of Africans in West and Southern Africa. In the coastal village of Oloshoro in Sierra Leone, AAPDEP is working with local fisherman to develop a community owned and operated commercial fishing enterprise that will feed local residents and provide an income for local youth and women. Proceeds from the fishing business will also be used to build a health center, helping to reverse a maternal mortality rate that is the highest in the world.

AAPDEP has also built rainwater harvesting systems in Sierra Leone and initiated a community health workers program to train local residents to treat and prevent waterborne diseases. In Zimbabwe, AAPDEP is working with the Ujamma Youth Farming Project (UYFP), an African youth-led farming cooperative that has secured a 100-acre plot of farmland in the city of Gweru under the Zimbabwe government's land redistribution program. AAPDEP has taken on a project to construct a 50m deep pressurized well for irrigation of a 25-acre section of the farmland, helping to support the efforts of UYFP to provide valuable training, employment, and food to the people of Zimbabwe.

AAPDEP is calling on all African scientists, agricultural specialists, engineers, doctors, nurses, and others with skills in web design, graphic arts, photography, videography, fundraising and community outreach to participate in its 2nd annual International Conference. The Conference will be used to further consolidate AAPDEP’s African Corps of Engineers Scientists and Healthcare Workers (AACESH) as an international body of skilled Africans uniquely positioned to respond to natural disasters, healthcare epidemics and humanitarian crises that arise anywhere in the African world. Working sessions will be held to strategize implementation of current and future projects, including a U.S. community farming project designed to prepare African communities for self reliance during this time of deepening economic crisis.

Dr. Aisha Fields is the Director of AAPDEP. She is a physicist whose work is focussed on using science to transform the day-to-day lives of African people. Dr. Fields declares, “Now we will no longer have to watch as our people suffer and die needlessly, hoping and waiting in vain for the mercy of others, like during the devastation of Hurricane Katrina! Africa is the richest continent on Earth, abundant in agricultural, mineral, oil and other wealth. Nevertheless, African people throughout the world live in abject poverty. This imposed poverty is rooted in an attack on Africa with the forced dispersal and enslavement of African people, colonialism and current day neo-colonialism. African people everywhere have been separated from our resources and each other while our land, labor and vast natural wealth are being used to enrich Europe, the U.S. and other imperialist nations.

“Africa’s intellectual resources have been expropriated as well, with the most skilled sector of the African population - African scientists, engineers, health care professionals and others - often using their skills to ensure that health and development abound in imperialist countries at the expense of the health and development of African communities. AAPDEP provides an opportunity for Africans to use our skills and training to uplift African communities everywhere. AAPDEP is not a charity program. It’s a revolutionary strategy aimed at achieving true self-determination for African people.”

AAPDEP’s 2009 Conference will be held on February 21-22 at the Uhuru House, 1245 18th Avenue South in St. Petersburg, Florida. For more information about AAPDEP or to register for the conference, visit www.developmentforafrica.org or call 727-821-6620.