September 22nd & 23rd, 2007
African People's Socialist Party International Headquarters
St. Petersburg, Florida USA

The conference was held at the renovated Uhuru House in St. Peterburg, FL.

The All African People's Development & Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) is an organization of the African People's Socialist Party that has as one of its primary goals to organize the collective energy, skill and technical expertise of Africans wherever they are located in order to develop Africa and African communities throughout the world.

AAPDEP's projects are done in collaboration with grassroots African organizations that are engaged in organizing our people to overturn the current world-wide social system responsible for the masses of African people living in abject poverty despite Africa's immense wealth. Spearheaded by Africans for Africans, AAPDEP's work is one component of a revolutionary strategy aimed at transforming the dismal reality of Africans everywhere and forwarding true self-determination for African people.

On September 22nd and 23rd, 2007, AAPDEP held its first working conference at the newly renovated International Headquarters of the African People's Socialist Party in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. This historic two-day conference brought together African scientists, medical doctors, engineers and students from throughout the United States, South America and the continent of Africa with the goals of consolidating the AAPDEP African Corps of Engineers, Scientists & Healthcare Workers (ACESH) and developing plans of action for projects in Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.

Chaired by AAPDEP Coordinator, African People's Socialist Party member and Physicist Dr. Aisha Fields, day one of the AAPDEP conference opened with a splendid presentation by Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, on the current crisis of imperialism and the responsibility that African people have to organize a worldwide movement aimed at deepening that crisis by struggling for control over our vast material and intellectual resources. Chairman Omali Yeshitela's presentation also focused on the particular role that the highly skilled sector of the African population must play in offering up its expertise to be used in that process. Other day one workshops featured presentations on AAPDEP's vision and purpose, its legal and organizational structure and an overview of the current projects in Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. In a workshop on fundraising, conference organizers and participants united to build yearly AAPDEP "caravans" that will tour AAPDEP representatives throughout the United States in order to inform communities about AAPDEP's activities, win participation in ACESH and collect equipment and money for AAPDEP projects.

The last workshop on day one dealt with the role and responsibility of the African Corps of Engineers Scientists & Healthcare Workers within the overall work of AAPDEP. The day ended with the consolidation of the leadership and initial membership of three technical teams within ACESH: 1) Healthcare, 2)Clean Water, and 3) Agriculture. The ACESH Healthcare team will be led by Dr. Michelle Strongfields, a medical doctor and college instructor trained in Cuba, the US and South America. The Agriculture team will be led by Jaleel Nash, M.S., an expert in Agribusiness whose vast skill set also includes farming and rainwater harvesting. Thea Browne-Dennis, a chemical engineering graduate student specializing in waste-water treatment will lead the ACESH Clean Water team.

Armed with an understanding of the mission of AAPDEP and its role in forwarding self-determination for African people worldwide, and having all united with joining AAPDEP's African Corps of Engineers Scientists & Healthcare Workers, conference participants spent day two developing plans of action for four current AAPDEP Projects in Sierra Leone & Zimbabwe. Three AAPDEP projects will begin January 2008 in Sierra Leone in collaboration with the Africanist Movement, an organizational member of the African Socialist International. They include:1) a rainwater harvesting project that organize the construction of community and home-sized rain catchment systems, 2) a community health workers training program that will focus on training local people to treat and educate others on how to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera and dysentery, and 3) the development of a community farm. In Zimbabwe AAPDEP will focus on the development of a borehole for farm irrigation in collaboration with the Ujamaa Youth Farming Project (UYFP).

Because of the tremendous response of Africans from throughout the world to the call made by AAPDEP to build the African Corps of Engineers, Scientists & Healthcare Workers, plans are being developed to build branches world-wide with its next branch likely to be established in Occupied Azania (South Africa). All those interested in building branches of ACESH in your country are encouraged to contact Dr. Aisha Fields by email at aisha@developmentforafrica.org

By organizing concrete, life-transforming projects that are themselves components of a revolutionary strategy aimed at overturning the primary contradiction faced by all African people everywhere, the consolidation of the All African People's Development & Empowerment Project and its African Corps of Engineers, Scientists & Healthcare Workers represents a significant leap forward in the process of building a worldwide movement of African people to reclaim our right to self-determination.

One Africa! One Nation!
Forward to Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe!