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You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

Americans' perceptions of Africa remain rooted in troubling stereotypes of helplessness and perpetual crisis.

With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.

You know, we're missing so much as African-Americans and we should be concerned about what's going on in Africa.

Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We're standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

Africa's salvation doesn't lie in begging and begging for more aid, and as an African, I find it very, very humiliating.

Not any amount of aid is going to move Africa forward.

Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.

Africa has been troubled for a long time - well, the world has been troubled ever since I was born.