With all of the news out there from various outlets, most people are led to believe that all of the nations in all of the world hate each other. But, that’s not true, amongst the many government involved organizations there are citizen groups that are working to understand other nations and bring people together one such group is the Sister Cities Group. Started by then-President Dwight Eisenhower, this organization has grown terrifically and has linked cities in the U.S. with cities similar in population, business, and size to connect together.
In Houston, TX, the Houston-Luanda Sister City group will be hosting an Africa conference to better promote these relations. Leanda is the capital of Angola and since the end of the civil war they have grown economically and socially.
Recently, I was given the opportunity to interview Dr. Robert Ford and get some insight into how such bonds are forged and how the continent of Africa is growing and becoming a place for the United States to connect through the Sister Cities organization.
In basic terms what does the Sister City Association and the Africa conference do?
Sister cities were invented as a means of providing an avenue for citizens to participate in international diplomacy. It got started under Dwight Eisenhower as he made an effort to take in addition to professional diplomacy he recognized that citizens had a great deal of influence with other citizens and put in place. This notion of sister cities, it has grown to the point now where there are more than 2,500 sister cities that are US cities paired with a foreign city and Houston there 18 of these entities operated under what’s called Sister Cities Houston and one of those 18 is the Houston- Luanda sister city which is the only African sister city.
Our organization is called the Houston Luanda sister city through Luanda connects with the international conference that Sister Cities International decided to have hosted in Houston. So, a combination of organizations including Houston Sister Cities, Luanda Sister Cities, and Sister Cities International are the three organizations at the national, local, and chapter level together, we are planning a three-day conference the first day of which is for one of the forums, which is the Africa forum. There’s also a forum invite and involving Chinese mayor’s. There are twenty Chinese mayors scheduled to be in Houston on the same day that the Africa forum is taking place which is July 17th.
The following two days eighteenth and nineteenth are more general sister city activity. Whereby if I go back to the Africa forum, our intent is to raise the level of interest in the pairing of African cities with US cities, with a focus on Houston. Because we only have one,(African sister city) it would be good if Houston enjoyed multiple Africa sister cities and that is a major objective we also want to use the opportunity of being involved in this international conference, to raise the awareness in Houston of the existence of the Houston and it’s Luanda sister city and to invite more Africans and African Americans who are interested in Africa to join with us, since at this time we are the only sister city in Houston. I say a Nigerian organization and joining with us now they can take they can have the benefit of seeing how an organization that’s been around since 2003 has operated in this face with the 17 other sister cities in Houston and now with the 2500 plus sister cities around the country this is my fourth opportunity, and I am fairly new to the current Houston Luanda sister city.
And that I was a member of the board six years ago and became inactive for four or five years and maybe two-three months ago I reconnected and deal with the fact that the current president was interested in bringing to life the organization that had somewhat diminished in terms of this influence with other sister cities ,and the fact that the forum was going to take place I wanted to get involved in the forum independent of whether it was through sister cities Luanda or just working with the national group . But now I am more committed to helping to build the local Houston the Luanda sister city as an element of sister city in general as a matter fact going forward, I’m hoping to get more involved at the national level.
What led you to become involved with this organization?
I guess when I first got involved with us in the Houston-Luanda sister cities it was the fact that I have a long-term interest in Africa. I visited probably seven or eight African countries I’ve done some business I’ve done some teaching my first career in higher education and one of my involvements was through a national international effort called GLOBE, Global Learning and observations to benefit the environment, is what got me really interested in Africa. Because I also recognized at the time I got involved with GLOBE, that there were few African countries and few historically black colleges that were part of this international network of school-based earth science activity. I learned that the National Oceanographic and AtmosphericAdministration or NOAA was the lead agency of an international effort to introduce young people to earth science and the Earth’s systems models. NASA, EPA, and the National Science Foundation were partners along with NOAA, and I’d had some involvement as a research administrator with all of those agencies, so I was intrigued by the fact that these four federal agencies had come together with the purpose of stimulating young people’s interests in earth science and as a result in STEM, in general, that’s how I got involved initially with GLOBE. which led me to Africa, which led me to being interested in the Houston Luanda Sister Cities Association.
Has some of the issues faced by travelers in some foreign countries had an adverse effect on these kinds of partnerships?
Well, not what my experience is. No, I’ve always had maybe good luck and that I knew someone where I was going. So there are people who travel to new foreign extended to the countries where I visited so that I was being picked up at the airport or I was going to meet someone that I knew from other involvement, and because of that I didn’t suffer what I hear from many other people who go for the first time and who know no one. For example, when I made my first trip I ended up landing in Senegal, but, my destination was the Gambia.
Getting off the plane I quickly realized that nobody spoke English, everybody was speaking French and they’ll carry people around trying to figure out how they can best reach you. But, I was with a sister who has been to the Gambia before, but, she was not very knowledgeable of Senegal either. As a result of that very first trip, where I lost all my luggage and never recovered it and then the next day was in Senegal went on to the Gambia were folks both English and the sister that I went with had great relationships with ministers of Agriculture. She even knew the president at the time too, and the ambassador from the U.S.
To the Gambia. So I was lucky enough to have someone to introduce me to people who were accommodating and interested in my missions. I wanted to determine if I could help with the lack of continuous electricity and energy in the country and that mission led me primarily into agriculture, because the strategy that I was hoping to bring to the floor, was similar to what I had witnessed in south Louisiana where rice hulls from rice farming formed the basis of electric generation. In the Gambia, the hulls from peanuts are so prolific since the Gambia is such a large producer that the hulls were clogging up the Gambia River and they were looking for a solution relative to peanut hulls.
And our reasoning was that peanut hulls could much like rice whole be a source of energy from which electricity could be that could be extracted. Unfortunately, soon after my trip there was a coup and the Minister of Agriculture was in prison for probably eight or nine years and all that I had hoped to get done in the Gambia evaporated I next decided to go back to Senegal on my next trip and Senegal became the country of interest for me. Probably five or six trips, I did do some business there still have good relationships with a couple of people with the University of Dakar, and a couple that is there so that’s kind of where I am with that.
What do you see as the importance of this organization and other groups like it in helping with international relations?
I think given what’s happening today in Africa, they’re great opportunities for us. Africa is cultural exchanges have a friend whose various in art we are now talking about how we can form sister Dallas don’t know if you are aware this but the African Union now has all 55 of the African countries agreeing to operate under one umbrella. Headquartered in Addis Ababa, the African Union now represents all of Africa and just this week there is now the last of the 55 countries signing off on a borderless trade continent. So now Africa has the largest Trade and Development entities, larger than the European Union.
We have to this appear to be boundless. Last week the AU ambassador was here in Houston, she spoke at the professional networking conference, which was down at the Houston’s Hilton last week for five days and the Ambassador spoke there for two days I learned today talking to the director of the conference on the day after she left. They have their conference at the Hilton, so she made rounds in Houston, I would have felt that Africa Forum would have found a way to engage her while she was here. She spent about three days in Houston, she lives in Nashville and is a very dynamic woman. She is now promoting that for return through Africa, and she’s a very powerful and persuasive woman who has taken on this role of ambassador, she said initially for six months, but now it’s a lifetime investment on her part.
And I think people we’ll listen to her, and many of us will respond to her plea. She’s not saying that all African-Americans should move to Africa, she’s saying that we all should have some engagement with Africa in part because the five or six of the top ten economies in terms of growth are in Africa, now. So, Africa is a continent where there is an economic activity, and there are needs for people with the skills that many African Americans have, but they simply don’t have a connection to Africa. This forum is one example of how those connections can be built and the whole notion of sister cities offers a tool for being able to be engaged in Africa as we develop more sister cities involving African cities.
Do you that as these sister cities grow in awareness in Africa will have the growth we see in other countries?
I do in fact. If you look at the info for sister cities have taken the course, it’s about evenly split between Asia and Europe. More than half of the sister city relationships all with countries, with things in those two continents. South America to a slightly greater extent then Africa, but Africa is the place where there is the greatest potential for growth. I still believe that once more African Americans and more Africans and Americans learn about the sister cities model, the more relationships we can build, the more commerce and trade we can expect to take place ,as well as more social exchanges, black art and music and dance and food etc so it is an absolute opportunity for sister cities to bring about more connections.
Where do you see this association improving and growing over the next few years?
Well, if we’re talking about Houston-Luanda sister city first, our local organization has a lot of regrowth, I’ll call it because when it was established in 2003, it was a very viable organization it ended after 2005 due to the climate and has not really been a player until the advent of this international conference. The conference has urged additional interests in its work from participating members, and I happened to be the membership chair as well as sponsor, so indeed the conference and the forum are probably the two growth catalysts for the local organization. And once we test this forum and conference, it would be up to the membership and this board to grow the organization across Houston.
I will be advocating the members of the board that we embrace all of the African communities in Houston. And as we do so, we have a better chance of having more communities recognized, well, they might grow a sister city. For example, I met with my banker this morning who was Nigerian. She was intrigued. She didn’t know about sister cities as such, she certainly didn’t know about Houston -Luanda. She heard an Angola had a sister city, she said well what about Port Harcourt and what about Abuja? And I said, what about it? Are you really helping to build such an organization? And her reply was “tell me what to do boss.” That’s what the forum is about, if it’s one change brought forth, they will learn about what Sister Cities is, and what some of the sister cities are doing.
We have examples of cities in the US who have built strong commercial relations with their sister city in Houston. They have consulates, they’re from Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, and that’s a full country consulate. And by the way, Houston has the second-highest number of the consulate in America, second only to New York. I believe we have 90, but I need to go through and count the number of applicants that are here in Houston, in addition, to having African communities, we have mechanisms whereby the consolates are representing the country here in the US. Providing services like passport, visas, and the like, so we have all of the ingredients to grow sister cities and to grow U.S. ethical relations right here in Houston. We simply have not taken advantage of the ingredients that we have in that hand membership chants of the system will wonder sister city.
How can an ordinary person become involved with organizations like this?
I would encourage the citizens who just have a curiosity to join our association. Learn along with us, first how we build these cultural and economic relations with Luanda, which happens to be a very wealthy country. And that it has great mineral wealth including gold and diamonds and zinc. I mean it is a very rich country, it is agriculturally very aggressive and has much land to be cultivated and to grow through. It is second only to Nigeria on the continent in terms of oil production so given that we are Houston, and that’s probably the origin of the Houston and the Luanda sister city, the oil connections between the US and Angola. It’s surprising to me that it hasn’t happened with the US and Nigeria and I think that’s what my banker was alluding to when she says,” oh I didn’t know about that sounds like something I could be interested in”. So, we will have an opportunity to grow these relationships. Again I’m intrigued by what’s happening with the AU and the fact that Ambassador Arikana is very interested in Houston. She spent almost a week here to talk to various groups and organizations about her vision of the African Union and how it can connect with African and African Americans and Afro-Brazilians and of all citizens over the world that seems to be her trying to bring about some real term connections with economics being highly prized.
About Robert L Ford, Ph.D.-
Membership Chair of the Houston-Luanda Sister City Association and heavily involved in the local community with various organizations and educational participation. Also, CEO – DRF Industries LLC, Retired Professor, VP, and Director
Department of Chemistry/Office of Research, Center for STEM Education and Outreach
Texas Southern University.