(The Sheba Post, Washington DC).  We recently had the opportunity to have a one on one interview with DC Mayor's Office of African Affairs's (OAA) Executive director Ms.Ngozi Nmezi.

OAA works to support and build the capacity of local entrepreneurs, small businesses, and, African community oriented organizations. OAA provides a platform for continued engagement, continuous exchange, and resourceful linkages; targeted organizational development and consulting to new and existing organizations; organizing and facilitating workshops, trainings, seminars, and forums to support development and sustainability of the District’s African community; access to resources on African community affairs, which includes stratified demographic data, research, studies, articles and trends to support fundraising efforts and proposal substantiation.

Ms.Ngozi Nmezi told The Sheba Post in details about her experince as a first generation American born Nigerian and described what the Office Of African Affairs does.

Here is what she told us,

The Sheba Post: Ms.Nmezi….can you give us a little bit of your back ground, and how you came to assume this responsibility?

Ms Ngozi  Nmezi: I have a background in public health and my first degree is in biology. I’m a proud graduate of Howard University I earned my first degree in biology, second degree in public health from Howard University. I moved on to work in a hospital because I was supposed to be a doctor. Within our families there’s always a huge emphases on stamp signs, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Not by anybody’s fault it’s just what is envisioned to be the more solid and straight career path. So I worked at a hospital a little under four years though I wasn’t clinical, I worked on the business side of things doing contracts. I realized it wasn’t really my calling; I was not looking to go down that path. I wanted to go into a field or profession where I could help more than one person at a time so I think policy was more of an interest.

When I left the hospital I moved on to work at AECOM International Development firm in Virginia where I coordinated proposals, and I obviously found a hit in African issues in terms of issues that were on the ground and what type of proposals we would go after to address some of the issues that were on the ground whether they were in Egypt or projects in the East or in the southern Region.  After I left AECOM, I actually came to D.C. government and worked at the department of real estate services doing risk management before actually joining this agency as the director. So we can rewind all the way back I was born here in district of Colombia both of my parents emigrated from Nigeria in the early 70’s. So I am Nigerian American, born here in D.C. but I did have the opportunity to go back to the continent where I completed most of high school. So it was a decision that my father made for my siblings and I to go back, to assure we were equated with the culture, learn the language, hear the language, know where you’re from, know your village. These are things that I experienced that at the time I didn’t understand what the significance of it was and I shouldn’t say the significance of it I should say I didn’t understand the reasoning behind it at the moment. It’s something I can now appreciate. But at the time it was incomprehensible to me. But I think it is fitting to what we do here at the office and how we work because it comes from a personal place having being raised by immigrant parents, what kind of struggle it was.

The Sheba Post: That’s an interesting experience. So as a first generation American born Nigerian; what were the challenges you and your parents faced growing up?

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: I think there typical challenges around access and really just being knowledgeable about the resources that are available right around them. If you talk about it from my parents perspective, I know that even speaking to them now or if there family friends or anyone who’s within the circle there’s always a question that like “How’d id known that?” or how’d id known that this was available for me to take advantage of things would have been a little different. So I think for them it was a challenge around access which is typical for anyone coming from a foreign land. From a youth perspective looking at my parents I think there might have been a divide sometimes around communication and different type of culture aspects that may have been different that you know as a kid it looks like a kork and a kork is strange and a kid doesn’t want to be strange they kind of want to be like everyone else. So I think that’s another challenge that there was a culture divide.

The Sheba Post: As the role and mandate of the office of African affair what is the role and mandate of the office of African affair?

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: The D.C mayor’s office on African affairs envisions the district of Columbia as a community that thrives on the full engagement of its ethnically, linguistic, and culturally diverse residences. The mayor and the administration realize that the district is a world class city. There are approximately 80,000 foreign born residence that actually reside right here in the District of Colombia of that number the foreign born African numbers is between 14,000 and 16,000. So what we do, at the mission is to insure access, so access to a full range of district government services to the local African immigrant community that resides right here in the district of Columbia so those services can be pertaining to health, education, or economic development in business, or public safety or human rights, housing. Essentially we do all of that to do three things. One is to improve the quality of life of the African immigrants here in D.C. Two is to support community development by building the institution capacity of African businesses and non profits that are right here in the District of Colombia. And three is to increase civic engagement in public participation of the African community that is right here in D.C.  So we do all of this through running public programs we organize, and facilitate public programs in the forms of forums or informational session or town halls. Just to make sure that the community is receiving the information and the resources and services they need to thrive here in D.C.

The Sheba Post:  What are the challenges and opportunities that exist?

Ms Ngozi  Nmezi: The challenges that are faced by service are having to serve such a widely diverse community.  There are over 50 African countries that are represented here, and we all know the diversity within the African continent it’s huge. There are different needs for different people there are obviously different languages, over 3,000 languages in continental Africa, 521 in Nigeria alone so there’s a lot of diversity. So that can kind of a little challenging because you want to make sure that you are meeting the needs of everyone that approaches you. Diversity within the community can be challenging. And I think for the community or in terms of just interactions, maybe for their challenge obviously just go back to the access piece or kind of a fundamental understanding of where to go to get specific services that could benefit them, and our scope is not just restricted to the district government agencies, we partner with non profits, and community based organizations, and faith based organizations, and the federal government. So we have a wide range of resources that we can make available to the community.

The Sheba Post: You mentioned early there might be about 80,000 foreign born individuals in the district and even though the African decent number might not be exact but because Washington D.C. is the Nation’s Capital, and in the surrounding areas Maryland and Virginia, a lot of African immigrants exist such as Ethiopians, Ghanaians, and Nigerians who do business in the city, and what can you do for them? Those also who do business in the city, how can they benefit from getting more information and access to resourses?

Ms Ngozi  Nmezi:  I think I even touched on one of the challenges in terms of just the lack of aggregated data or disaggregated data of the African nationals foreign born African verses the African American or the black race, so Africans are black for the most part, that’s well known but what happens is with the black race or  the African American box you lose a lot of the kind of linguistic and cultural diversity that exists within those groups so what happens is from a policy level  it’s a invisibility that exists because as an African immigrant you are in an African American box that you have to tick but then there are certain programs or outreach programs that are catered to an African American constituency  may not necessarily reach an African immigrant based on their experience, their culture, their language,  so that’s another major challenge. I would say in the office it is just really being able to get sufficient research and support in that regard because of the lack of data or the lack of disaggregated data on the front end. But in regards to the business I think that immigrants are thirty percent more likely to start businesses than native born Americans, and the African immigrants in particular are extremely special because they are the newest, youngest, most educated, foreign born constituency in the nation. Because they are so new they have very strong ties to the continent so you will also find that most of the people you come in contact with have a zeal to actually do things here, and on the continent because there foot is in two places because of that very strong tie and because half of the foreign born constituency that arrived in the United States has done so after 2000 so why not harness that or really capitalize on that around business, and international business and trade and export. So the mayor has launched this new initiative called Export D.C. and this is something that we can get out to the businesses and it really just supports the presidential mandate to double trade and export by the end of 2013 for businesses that are already exporting and to actually help the businesses that are wanting to start exporting, increase their own exports or start exporting. So you all know that the mayor is currently in China so he’s really interested in the international business component of it, and he’s doing a trade mission there so I’m really interested in getting the businesses here in the district such as African businesses involved in this program so at least if they’re interested in exporting they can increase their technical capacity to do so and if they are already doing so they can get support to increase the exports. And it supports them, it supports our presidential mandate. In terms of just businesses that exists within our community it’s good to think of them in different buckets. You have to ones that have just started that are very important because 99% of small businesses are employing all of America. And then you have the ones that are floats that have been around for a while but then you have the ones that are more established and have more footing and then the ones that are extremely developed that are ready to just expand. So I think that is what we can offer is really just depends on which bucket you will ideally fall in just to make sure that you are maximizing on the types on resources that are available. So for the start ups that are wanting to get to SBA we want make sure we refer them so that they can become a certified business and be able to just do business with the government if that’s a route they would want to go, and link them with different resources around like loans or what have you so at least they can qualify for that verses a more established business that may be looking to perhaps go for a solicitation overseas.

The Sheba Post: As you were answering something came up that I wanted to ask. Does the D.C. Government also locate certain contracts for a minority and small businesses that have been certified for example contracting with the D.C. Government?

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: In terms of small businesses yes. That prevision is there.

The Sheba Post: That’s good to know. So what kind of community partnership is your office really looking for with the greater African Diaspora that lives in the district and in the surrounding neighborhood which is a stake holder with what’s going on in the city and particularly also with the Ethiopian community because this area is where the largest concentration we are out of Africa.

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: Thank you for mentioning that! We are an Ethiopian town and yes Ethiopians are definitely the largest African constituency here in the District of Colombia. I think it’s followed by Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Eretria, Kenya, but Ethiopia is by far the largest constituency here in D.C. So we seek partnerships basically around specific community issues and then they have to also align with the mayoral priorities  because from a larger birds eyes stand point you want to make sure you are capturing those priorities that are extremely important. So obviously help disparities are huge because of access and linguistic challenges particularly within the Ethiopian community around Amharic so a help partnership is extremely important we have a lot of community partners, and leaders that are particularly passionate about it that want to come together and push things forward in that regard. If you are speaking about economic development and business support, to community members, those more established businesses can mentor the ones that are trying to start up which I think is extremely important so I think there is an opportunity for a partnership to start there. And then I think just general outreach is important. I know I can speak from personal experience, I feel like every Sunday my mother is getting all dressed up to go to a small group meeting, there’s so many. Those are prime opportunities to do outreach, they do wonderful work. They built a motherless home in Nigeria. There’s so many opportunities for them to get support, to support some of the things they are doing. If you’re talking about U.S Aid and the Diaspora engagement they are actually targeting African Diaspora groups that are a part of the American Diaspora community to really be able to do things in their country of origin. These are things we all have been doing naturally. Just in that regard I always want to tell people that I know there are different opportunities, you’ve organized this volunteer group, your running almost as a small nonprofit. If you think about what you’re doing it’s just different steps to actually make it more solid. So it is just about connecting those dots that are important.

The Sheba Post: Thank you very much; I know your office is organizing some events coming up in July. Can you give us some briefing on those and what we can do to help?

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: Absolutely, we are so excited about our 3rd annual D.C. Africa Festival  which is going to be taking place Saturday, July 21st. it will be on Georgia Avenue at the community center so if you want to envision where it is it’s right on the corner of Georgia Avenue and Uclid so it is going to be on the upper baseball field right on that corner. We’re very excited to be having a new venue this year, the past two years we’ve been at Tacoma Park but this year we are on Georgia Avenue which is wonderful and our theme this year is building one city. Building one city showcasing Africa’s history, heritage, and interconnectedness. It reflects the mayor’s vision one city where all communities come together and raise multicultural awareness program to life.  This is a program that aims at promoting, connecting among districts, ethnically diverse African descent, and showcasing cultural contributions of Africa to the multiculturalism of the District of Colombia. So we obviously hope to bridge gaps around a different experience in history that connects all of people of African descent. So were not just focusing on continental Africa it’s more of a pan African theme so we talk more about how the afro Brazilian Capuada is very influenced by continental African dance, or Afro Cuban who will be a performance to connect where all of it came from.

The Sheba Post: We thank you so much for your time.

Ms Ngozi Nmezi: Thank you.

For More information on the Festival, please visit http://oaafestival.weebly.com/