Behold the Flame: On Investment, Leadership & Memory

Dear Cherished AAI Community,

It has been such a pleasure to celebrate such an important season with you.

At AAI, we create catalytic moments that spark and nurture the genius of Global Africa. We believe that by fostering these moments we can abolish the myth of human hierarchy. This framing might seem a bit literary, but it is actually scientific. Let me explain. To catalyze is to breathe a quickening into things, urging change to unfold without diminishing the one who sparked it. AAI was founded in a period shaped by thousands of incandescent moments. Fire is not something that you can touch; it is a process. Its shape is not fixed; instead, it is a pattern that changes constantly depending on airflow, fuel, and gravity. At AAI, this means that our role is to create and nurture moments in the Global African ecosystem that shape the airflow, fuel and gravity so that we can advance our mission. Our community is one that honors the past, leverages its wisdom in the present, and invests in our collective abundant future. As an ember brightens when sheltered and encouraged, our collective light expands when we make space for one another’s gifts.

AAI was founded during a moment in history when Global Africa was showing the world what it meant to be free. People from Accra to Windhoek to Maputo to New York City were expanding the world’s imagination about what freedom and sovereignty could be. At our 41st gala, we were so lucky to be in the room with some of the very people tonight who plotted out these paths for us, such as Her Excellency Dr. Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah, President of Namibia, and His Excellency Daniel Francisco Chapo, President of Mozambique. This year also marked the creation of a new award for us, the Investor Impact Award, which was given to Mission Investments Program at the Ford Foundation, whose remarkable achievements remind us that the frameworks we have often been given for success are far too limiting and get in the way of great ideas.

At AAI, we serve our community by supporting our partners to expansively and practically co-create strategies in which prosperity and sovereignty not only coexist but depend on each other. That, to me and our wonderful community, is the work of this next chapter.  Together, we are cultivating work that, over time, builds warmth, clarity, and direction for the communities we serve.

To that end, it was an honor for us to sign a Memorandum of Agreement with the Institute of African Studies (University of Ghana) in Accra several weeks ago. Many years ago, I had the pleasure of working with IAS, but it was only recently that I reread the seminal text written by Kwame Nkrumah, African Genius. Nkrumah’s history with AAI is a rich area for further discovery, but the relationship between one of AAI’s Founders, Horace Mann Bond, and Kwame Nkrumah was deep, enriching, and highly consequential for them and their respective institutions. I am confident that we will co-create remarkable work that will make our Founders proud. Their partnership is a reminder that when ideas meet the right conditions, they continue to shape the world long after their first spark.

It has also been intellectually uplifting to dive into our archives in a beautiful and generative process with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. AAI has a rich and vibrant history that tells the story of waves of freedom movements across Global Africa, and ensuring that these records and stories are publicly accessible to scholars and the public alike has never felt more urgent. Each discovery in the archives offers a quiet glow from the past—guidance, context, and meaning that help orient our future.

In this newsletter, I invite you to read the wonderful stories from our community, which show how we are continually creating and fanning these sparks.

Thank you!

Felicia Appenteng

President & CEO

The Africa-America Institute