THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
The Federal Government has appointed Dr Sylvie Nantcha as a member of a technical commission on migration.
The task of the 24-member commission is to identify “the root causes of flight and irregular migration” and it has until the end of next year to make concrete recommendations for action on how to tackle the issues.
Flight and migration are among the biggest challenges of our time, Ms Nantcha, a member of the CDU and chairman of The African Network of Germany (TANG), said after the announcement of her appointment.
“It is high time that we dealt with the question of why so many people in recent years feel forced to leave their homeland. And only when we have identified and understood the diverse reasons of escape and irregular migration that we will be able to fight the causes of flight.”
Nantcha, who was born in August 1974 in Maroua, Cameroon, holds a doctorate degree in German studies. She was elected the first Afro-German CDU councillor in Freiburg and Germany in 2009. As city councillor (2009-2014), she was spokeswoman for the CDU Group on Education and Integration.
The politician and community activist was also a member of the CDU’s state executive committee in Baden-Württemberg from 2009 to 2013, the first Afro-German to achieve that feat in the country.
Nantcha studied German Studies, Romance Studies and Linguistics at the University of Freiburg. Her academic interests are in multilingualism, language acquisition, intercultural literature, diversity, intercultural communication, forms of cultural contact, social dimension of identity construction and perception of foreigners.
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The focus of TANG, which she co-founded in 2013, is the exchange and co-operation among the more than 500 Afro-German associations and the integration of people of African descent in Germany. Nantcha and her organisation has conceived and implemented several projects on migration and integration. For example, since 2016 she has been carrying out a campaign, Verlorene Träume (Lost Dreams), for increased awareness of the risks and dangers of irregular migration in seven West African countries.
Nantcha, who was awarded the prestigious Helen-Weber-Prize in 2011, is married and has three adult children. She has lived in Germany since 1992 and became a German citizen in 2003.
FemiAwoniyi
