How The African Magazine came to life

BY KOSSI GBEDIGA

The Fifth Bishop John T. Walker Memorial Dinner in honor of then-South Africa’s president, President Mandela, held on October 6, 1994 in a major Washington hotel coincided with the launch of the first ever (upscale) African magazine published in the United States: The African, the brainchild of award-winning African reporter Soumanou Salifou who was unaware of the planned function until earlier that day.

Coincidentally, the two headlines on the glossy, bright-color cover of the maiden issue of the pioneering magazine were: “Benin President Nicephore Soglo’s Crusade Against Afro-Pessimism,” and “Fashioning a New Black Consciousness,” with a great picture of the president wearing a breathtaking African costume. Hundreds of copies of the magazine were distributed during the dinner with virtually every guest and reporter holding one.

Related link:  http://sws2.xrto.net/my-personal-debt-to-mandela/

In the Publisher’s Statement titled “We will tell our own story,” Salifou wrote that the mission of the magazine was two-fold: to tell the full story about Africa as objectively as humanly possible, and to fuel the laudable on-going efforts to reconnect Africans and African Americans. He added: “Africans are fed up with the Doomsday stories about their continent in the Western media. African voices are needed in the American media to effectively fight the never-ending bigotry that has made some of us lose hope in ourselves. The need to believe in ourselves has never been greater.” He concluded in these words: “It is time, indeed, to tell our own story.”