"What I have learned is that we all have basically the same concerns," said Michael Blunt, mayor of Chesilhurst, a delegate from the National Conference of Black Mayors who attended the Dec. 15-19, 2011 meeting of 250 mayors of African descent in Dakar. The sessions were a joint effort of the National Conference of Black Mayors, the National Association of Senegalese Mayors, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
In the year between my two visits to Dakar, African nations have been part of the democratic change that is sweeping the world. On my first trip, we sat at the foot of the African Rennaissance Monument just a tent away from Africa's first and only female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. We saw Libya's Moammar Gadhafi enter a youth rally in December 2010 like a rock star. He died of a bullet to the head just 10 months later, his country in turmoil.
Political change also erupted in Egypt, the most populous country in northern Africa, where protests led to the ouster of its president, Hosni Mubarak.
And on my second visit to Dakar, the air seemed to crackle with tension as presidential elections were set to start within days. We wondered whether this nation would remain the only country in mainland West Africa to have escaped a coup since the end of its colonial era.
