Live Your Life ! This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Mallence Bart-Williams introduced her second home Sierra Leone and its talented people, who are part of her project FOLORUNSHO. Find out more via http://www.tedxberlin.de
Mallence Bart-Williams was born in Cologne, Germany. She is a Sierra Leonean writer and filmmaker and a German fashion designer. She pursued her studies in economics and finance in Paris, Singapore, and Great Britain. Today she lives across the globe, produces an all-natural cosmetics line in Hong Kong, and is the founder and creative director of the Freetown-based creative collective FOLORUNSHO, a ‘SHARITY’ that she initiated with street kids in Sierra Leone. Due to her German-Sierra Leonean roots, she perceives herself as a bridge connecting two vastly different worlds. Her diverse background enables her to see creative solutions to common problems.
Within their three years of operation, her collective has taken homeless children off the streets and into school, developed a sneaker and clothing collection, published a book and documentary of their story, and has held fine art exhibitions. Through her work with FOLORUNSHO, she connects cultural contrast, enabling people to share ideas, take action, and get results.
One thing that keeps me puzzled, despite having studied finance and economics at the world’s best universities, the following question remains unanswered. Why is it that 5,000 units of our currency are worth one unit of your currency where we are the ones with the actual gold reserves? It’s quite evident that the aid is in fact not coming from the West to Africa but from Africa to the Western world.
The Western world depends on Africa in every possible way since alternative resources are scarce out here. So how does the West ensure that the free aid keeps coming? By systematically destabilizing the wealthiest African nations and their systems, and all that backed by huge PR campaigns — leaving the entire world under the impression that Africa is poor and dying and merely surviving on the mercy of the West.
Well done Oxfam, UNICEF, Red Cross, Live Aid, and all the other organizations that continuously run multi-million-dollar advertisement campaigns depicting charity porn to sustain that image of Africa globally. Ad campaigns paid for by innocent people under the impression to help, with their donations. While one hand gives under the flashing lights of cameras, the other takes in the shadows.
We all know the dollar is worthless, while the Euro is merely charged with German intellect and technology and maybe some Italian pasta. How can one expect donations from nations that have so little? How super sweet of you to come with your coloured paper in exchange for our gold and diamonds. But instead, you should come empty-handed, filled with integrity and honour. I want to share with you our wealth and invite you to share with us.
The perception is that a healthy and striving Africa would not disperse its resources as freely and cheaply, which is logical. Of course, it would instead sell its resources at world market prices, which in turn would destabilize and weaken Western economies established on the post-colonial free-meal system.
Last year the IMF reports that six out of 10 of the world’s fastest-growing economies are in Africa, measured by their GDP growth. The French Treasury, for example, is receiving about 500 billion dollars year in year out, in foreign exchange reserves from African countries based on Colonial Debt they force them to pay.
Former French President Jacques Chirac stated in an interview recently that we have to be honest and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.
In 2008 he stated that without Africa, France will slide down in the rank of a third-world power. This is what happens in the human world. The world we have created. Have you ever wondered how things work in nature? One would assume that in evolution, the fittest survive.
However, in nature any species that is overhunting, over-exploiting the resources they depend on as nourishment, natural selection would sooner or later take the predator out because it upsets the balance.
