On today’s Earth, the rich are the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. Even residents of these countries who think they are doing poorly are often much better off than most of the world’s population. Africa and Africans, however, are, collectively among the poor.

So if it is as hard for a rich man to get to heaven as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and if God judges nations as well as individuals, America, including the African-American nation within it, needs to do more to elevate Africa out of poverty.

Jesus told the parable of a poor man, covered with sores, who longed to eat what fell from a rich neighbor’s table. When each died, the poor man went to heaven and the rich man went to hell.

Preaching out of that text, the nationally-renowned Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood speculated that in life, God had given gifts to the poor man through the rich man, but that the rich man had refused to release them.

The same may be true of the African-American nation and Africans in the motherland, and of successful African immigrants and Africa. We Blacks in “the West” should seek God’s guidance on how we can help Africa’s poor.

Perhaps we can start by saving, pooling, and shipping seeds from the fresh fruits and vegetables that we eat, especially subtropical and tropical ones like citrus and mango. African agronomists can then deploy the seeds to help rebuild farms ravaged by drought.

This costs individual African-Americans and African expatriates no initial outlay, since when we buy fruit we get seeds free. Stuff we hoard from supermarkets and often waste is scarcer in poorer parts of the world.

More expensively and aggressively, perhaps African-American suburbanites, coordinated by churches in consultation with African agronomists, can buy and ship playground grasses to help stem desertification. This word refers to the southward movement of the Sahara Desert. Large parts of Africa’s productive grassy plain belt – the Savannah – is drying up.
As we learn about the current drought in Niger and future similar crises in other parts of Africa, blacks in our part of the Diaspora should drop down our buckets where we are. We should not assume that the G8 has the solutions under control.
The G8 is an organization of eight of the world’s most powerful countries – the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Russia. This group agreed in early July 2005 to cancel World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt for some African countries. This is good.

Simultaneously, however, it tied the cancellation to debtor countries agreeing to “free trade.” This is problematic. Because of unequal mass production and pricing capacity, exacerbated by U.S. government subsidies to huge corporate farmers, free trade would further entrench the G8 countries as producers and Africans as consumers.

Poor African consumers spend too much money on T-shirts and sneakers, rather than making their own kente and other cloths as they have for centuries, thereby employing their own. Poor African consumers might buy rice from the Carolinas, rather than from the West African farmers whose ancestors brought rice-farming skills to the Carolinas. Cancellation of African debt with a “free trade” stipulation, therefore, may help the G8 more than Africa.

The former master – whether colonial master or slave master – cannot always be trusted to selflessly correct the problems that he has created. We, the former colonized and former enslaved, must help each other.

“…Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied...”
Luke 6:1-2 (NASB)

“But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry…”
Luke 6:24-25 (NASB)

“If a brother or a sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use it that?”
James 2:15-16 (NASB)