The Sunday Mail
Bridge Reporter
George Emmanuel College celebrated Africa Day in style last week with the students clad in African costumes representing different countries.
Each class was tasked by the school’s toastmasters club to represent a country and the winning costumes came from Somalia, Niger, Uganda, Morocco, Ethiopia, Togo and Tunisia. However, Uganda and Morocco stood out as the best dressed countries on the day. The students then took time to present drama, music, poetry and modelling competitions based on the Africa Day theme in an event that stretched into the evening.
ABOUT AFRICA DAY
Africa Day celebrations are held on May 25, every year.
To celebrate Africa Day is to look back to 1963, the year of the founding of the Organisation of African Union (OAU) – now African Union – and marvel in the vision that lay in the leaders of 30 of the then 32 independent African states when they signed a founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This day is a celebration of the oneness of Africans. It is a day to enjoy the freedom that African nations enjoy that stems largely from the many resolutions that have been passed by the OAU or the AU over the past five decades. Whilst more African States are now independent, there is still work to be done before Africa can boldly state that she is wholly independent, wholly uncolonised, wholly herself.
What sort of questions ought we to be asking ourselves regarding the state of our motherland called Africa? What sort of behavioral adjustments are necessary from us as individuals to make Africa a better and safer home for all and sundry?
The AIDS statistics in Africa are shockingly worrying and it is a fact that we need to act on our morality as individuals to reduce the increasing rate at which people are succumbing to the deadly disease. We constitute only 11 percent of the world’s population yet about 67 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are in Africa while an estimated 14 million children in Africa have been orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS.
That is sad and reflect on our image as Africans. We cannot blame anyone but ourselves for the continued effects of Aids on the continent. As we celebrate Africa Day, it is necessary for us as individuals to reflect on these statistics and change for the betterment of Africa as a continent.
George Emmanuel College tried to adress this issues through their presentations on this glorious day.
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