Dr. Mujahid Nyahuma is a professor at Rowan University in New Jersey and is also president of the group Global Africans. In comments about Senegalese-born Bashirou Seck, he said Seck “is the ultimate global African that has a Pan African outlook.”
“Seck brought the largest delegation from Senegal to the 2024 African Economic Development and Tourism Summit in Wilmington, Delaware,” Nyahuma added.
Additionally, the Muslim Journal reported in August of this year that Seck, the founder and executive director of Global African Gateway, hosted a Black American delegation in Senegal that was in the African country to engage in business and trade.
He is also the owner of a firm in Dakar, Senegal, and functions as chief advisor to the Office of Special Envoy of the Republic of Sierra Leone Ambassador Waleed Shamsid-Deen.
Additionally, Seck is active in interfaith dialogue and working as an advisor to many religious leaders in West Africa, including in Senegal, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and the Ivory Coast.
According to summit2024.delawareafricacoalition.org, “Bashirou Seck’s cultural competence and connections at the highest level of West African governments and with business.
Social and religious leaders have enabled him to actively engage in bridging the gap between Africans on the continent and people of African descent, especially those in the USA over the last 25 years. His actions embrace sectors including foreign direct investment, culture, education, knowledge and technology transfer, tourism, etc.”
The Philadelphia-based Dr. Nyahuma, whose organization does fact-finding and sponsors tours in Africa, added, that Seck’s reach across to the African/Black diaspora in the U.S. was influenced by the late Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan, who served as pastor of Zion Baptist Church and who was the founder of the African African-American biannual summits of the 1990s.
In 1991 and again in 1993, Dr. Nyahuma and this writer attended Rev. Sullivan’s summits in the Ivory Coast and Gabon respectively. After Dr. Nyahuma and I attended Rev. Sullivan’s church service in Philadelphia, he met with us and several members of the Fruit of Islam (F.O.I.
The men of the Nation of Islam), and he extended an invitation to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan to attend and participate in the 1993 African African-American Summit in Gabon.
During a recent dinner with Dr. Nyahuma and Bashirou Seck, we discussed his long history of bringing Africa together with Africans in the diaspora.
One of his most notable achievements was helping to facilitate nearly 200 Senegalese, visiting America in 1995, to attend the historic Million Man March called by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. Nearly two million Black men attended the Washington, D.C., gathering under the theme of atonement, reconciliation and responsibility.
Seck’s interest in Black America goes back to his college days at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. While studying American literature and history, in a class that focused on listening comprehension, the teachers gave the students audio tapes to listen to, Seck said.
He said the cassette tapes included speeches by Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Booker T. Washington, and others. He said of all the lectures he listened to, it was Minister Farrakhan’s speech that resonated the most, and who he chose to study.
“This is how I discovered the Nation of Islam, through listening to Farrakhan from school. Then it just grew into his speech in Jamaica, his speech in 1985 at Madison Square Garden,” Seck said.
“Add to that, my focus was the Black American journey throughout the general history of the United States of America. How this African culture is being enriched, diversified by some of her (African) sons and daughters, after being ripped from the continent. … For me, it was Allah’s (God’s) work.”
He added, “A new African civilization was created (in America) to add to the original (African) civilization and that is why the ‘Global African.’ For me, the African continent is wherever people in the world are able to create civilization and culture.”
Seck explained that “What is most striking and impressive in the work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad for me is how he was able to create such a disciplined community, hardworking, and self-reliant. I think this is really impressive. And this is not told to the world … . It’s just like these unsung heroes.”
Concerning America’s Black Muslim population, Seck gave special recognition. “There is something in the achievement of the Muslims of America that needs to be told to the world, especially to the global world of Islam.”
He added, “If they were able to build a strong Muslim community in the (un-Islamic) environment of America … I think we need to definitely see how we can leverage that knowhow, that knowledge, especially the importance of doing for self.”
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