Colorado Lawmaker High on ADDI

A GDN exclusive By Peter Grear

A few months ago, my podcast co-host and I interviewed the Honorable Naquetta Ricks, a state
representative in Colorado and chair of the Denver chapter of ADDI (the African Diaspora
Development Institute).    We aimed to explore her involvement with ADDI and its founder,
former African Union Ambassador to the US, Arikana Chihombori-Quao, MD.
Her response to our questions was very inspiring, explaining GDN’s objective in supporting
ADDI and its mission, the Economic Liberation of Africa and Africans globally. Representative
Ricks is a storehouse of information. Her history includes being born in Liberia and moving to
the US as a refugee at age twelve following a bloody military coup in 1980.
Her family settled in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. She has an undergraduate degree in
accounting from Metropolitan State University and holds a master’s in business administration
from the University of Colorado. Last summer, she took a course in state government at Harvard
University. Representative Ricks is working on a certificate in economic development from the
Kennedy School.

When asked about Dr. Arikana and ADDI, she got very excited. She explained that she first
heard Dr. Arikana in a YouTube video back in 2018 and traveled to Minnesota for a business
meeting to hear Dr. Arikana give a speech to the Liberia Business Association. She explained
that she became extremely excited when Dr. Arikana spoke about her vision for Africa’s future.
Representative Ricks talked about the value she found in supporting Black business in Denver,
where she founded the African Chamber of Commerce in 2014 and around the world. She has
helped to sponsor at least four trade missions to Liberia and is involved in the planning of at least
two more this year, to include at least one additional country.
She talked about other Black business and leadership organizations in Denver and how they all
work together with a spirit of inclusivity.

ADDI’s mission is the economic liberation of Africa.  One of our goals is to industrialize Africa
and build the Africa that we want.  As the second largest continent in the world, it is home to
approximately 30% of the world’s mineral resources and about 60% of the world’s arable land.
It is the birthright of Black people and should be an inheritance for our children.
As I opined to people regularly, I told her that I considered Dr. Arikana to be the most
consequential Black leader since Dr. Martin Luther King here in America and President Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana, and I asked her if she agreed.  She responded affectionately, and likened Dr.
Arikana to a pied piper, someone with the ability to charm and persuade others, as Dr. Arikana
does through her vivid recounting of African history and passionate speeches.

Much of our discussion addressed the need for investors and the need for investors to build
trusted relationships before trying to strike business deals.  Like most ADDI members and
supporters, she speaks of the limitless opportunities for wealth creation for the diaspora.  She

pointed out that Liberia has the largest rainforest in Africa, so its agriculture supports a wide
variety of crops.  Examples of these include cocoa, coffee, pineapples, and palm oil.  Liberia, as
a tourist attraction, has nearly 360 miles of coastland and many, many beaches.
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