Colorado African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) Fights for Economic Liberation of Africa – GDN exclusive

Part 1 of a three-part interview

Good evening, listeners. My name is Peter Grear. I am the publisher of Greater Diversity News. I have the Honorable Naquetta Ricks, a member of the House of Representatives of the great State of Colorado. And Gerry McCants, the co-host of this podcast that we’re doing, entitled Doing Business in Africa. And with that being said, we’re going to go right to our representative, representative, thanks for being here:

Rep. Ricks

I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you regarding a topic that’s very, very close to my heart, which is to increase trade and investment between the US and Africa and, of course, with the diaspora, the African diaspora, which is worldwide. My name is State Representative Naquetta Ricks, and I am from the great state of Colorado. As you said, I have been in the US now since 1980. So, a very long time. My family moved here in 1980 after a bloody military coup. We came as asylum seekers seeking refuge because our native land, Liberia, West Africa, where I’m from, was not safe. In 1980, my mother’s fiancée, who was a member of the government when a military coup happened, and the government was overthrown, soldiers came to our home in April of 1980, looking for my mom’s fiancée, who was one of the government officials. When they found him, they dragged him and my mother out to the driveway. By the grace of God, they left my mom. But they did throw my mom’s fiancée, Dr. Bright, in the back of a pickup truck. Within a few days of that incident. They have rounded up 13 members of the government, tied them to a beach in the City of Monrovia and shot all of them by firing squad. That was a very, very tragic situation. After the soldiers left our home, we knew that we were not safe. So, we quickly packed one suitcase a piece: my mom, myself, my sister who was younger than me, and another cousin who was with us; we went into the city and were at a relative’s house for about two months.

My mother quickly applied for a leave of absence. We came to the United States in June of 1980. We landed in Chicago, where my mom had family and ultimately, we came to Colorado because my mom had two sisters here in Colorado who were attending university. So, I grew up in Aurora, Colorado, which is outside of Denver, and have been here for a long time. Colorado has become my home. I now serve as a State Representative. I’m in my fourth year in the Colorado General Assembly.

I represent a very diverse area that has over 300 different languages being spoken in our public schools. It’s extremely diverse with people from all over the world, but it’s a great place. I am the Founder and President of the African Chamber of Commerce, which was started roughly in 2014, when our first African mall opened, the Afrique Mall. We quickly realized that there was no organization advocating for African businesses. So, we started there as an advocacy organization. We were around for a while and in 2019 we got our footing when we supported the State of Colorado with the census.

They were looking to count the hard-to-count communities, which are, You know, typically immigrant populations because they don’t understand everything that’s going on, or they’re not trusting of government. So, we were able to form partnerships within the African immigrant community and help to count the people. And then, in 2019, 2020, COVID struck in March 2020. And we became a very, very trusted voice, because every week, we were the voice of information for our community. We did weekly town halls, where people tuned up, and we helped them get resources, whether that was food, help for rent, you know, people just didn’t know where to turn; it was an unprecedented time. And we could still help get the census information out while getting information to our community.

We hosted the governor, different city mayors and everything, bringing everybody together to try to make sense of the unprecedented pandemic. And we’ve been rolling ever since. This last weekend, we just commemorated our third annual business award ceremony, where we had the President of ADDI Ambassador Arikana Chihombori-Quao as our lifetime achievement award recipient. She also got to speak to our audience here in Colorado, which was a very, very exciting time. But we do all of this in the interest of growing the economic interests of the immigrant and black communities and business communities of Colorado. So. when we talk about engagement with the diaspora, we know that to grow or to develop the Africa that we want, we need to be engaged; we need to take the expertise that we have gleaned here through education, through business through experience and working and take it back home to the continent and help to develop that.

The African Chamber has been very active in doing many of those things. We’ve done that by taking trade missions, taking investors back from the US into Liberia; we’ve done at least four trade missions, starting in 2018, taking investors back where they were interested in everything from mining to education, to agriculture, to tourism. And we continue to do those types of events and ventures. This year, the African chamber is looking to bring a business-to-business type event that will bring people from the continent to talk about their small businesses and the things they do and connect them here. We’re looking to do that with business partners sometime in September. And then, in December of this year, we’ll be doing another trade mission to the continent. Liberia will be one of those countries, and we’re looking for a second country where we might be able to do business-to-business opportunities. Regarding an investment conference, we normally also add some tourism there because people need to see the country and the places, they will be investing in. So, I’ll stop there and let you guys ask some questions.

The next part starts to explore the vast opportunities, attendant risk, and developing projects in Africa, the Motherland.