Afrotak TV cyberNomads

AFROTAK TV cyberNomads is an Afro-German media, culture and education archive and social network . It was founded on January 31, 2001 as cyberNomads in Berlin . The non-profit, politically independent, development policy initiative for education, media, art, culture and ecology was initiated by Michael Küppers-Adebisi and Adetoun Kueppers-Adebisi . The current name of the initiative has existed since 2007. Since June 2007, Adetoun Kueppers-Adebisi has taken over the management of the project.

task

Afrotak is committed to an equal partnership between Africa and Europe and for the emancipation of migrants and the people of color , the African diaspora in Germany, and for equality between women and men. By promoting educational policy, media, artistic and scientific exchange, Afrotak also wants to help raise awareness of migrant issues in Germany. Afrotak wants to advocate the development of structures that question the European power of definition , which the network regards as given due to postcolonial economic, political and cultural resources, and counteract racist structures in favor of an equal exchange.

history

For the Federal Agency for Civic Education , Afrotak developed a pilot project for the educational integration of migrants, especially the African diaspora in Germany, from 2000 to 2001 . From 2001 to 2005, a digital and historical inventory of the African diaspora in Germany, its non-governmental organizations and its media was carried out for the first time via an online portal. Individuals, media professionals, academics and artists have linked up around the world and communicated internally via the client management system and worked on the research, editing and archiving of the relevant data, information and content.

The first milestones were the black media congresses designed by Afrotak and implemented with funds from the Federal Agency for Civic Education . The capacity building approach of the media congresses brought together international experts from the diaspora from Africa, Europe and the USA in the fields of education, art and media with German and civil society representatives from the diaspora:

2002 under the title "Soulpower and Cyberspace" (in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Berlin)
2003 "Networking Europe" (in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation Berlin)
2004 “From Berlin Africa Conference 1884 to Afrofuturism 2004” (Black Media Congress Berlin 2004 was part of the Black Atlantic project of the House of World Cultures Berlin).

A permanent network structure was created from 2003 to 2008. During this time, more than 11 million visitors worldwide have accessed the content and publications of the education portal. More than 4000 participants from the African diaspora have registered on the social network. The network was documented in the Black German Yello Pages .

From 2007 to 2008 the online portal was converted to the latest Web 2.0 applications and an online TV channel was added. Afrotak started in 2001 with the private multimedia archive of Michael Küppers-Adebisi , who has been documenting the African diaspora in Germany on video since 1989. In the meantime, the archive has grown to a pool of over 2000 videos on a complex of the following topics: African diaspora in Germany from 1900 to the present day, racism , integration in the labor market, African art and media in Germany, African scholars and racism in institutions . Gradually, this archive is to be made available to the general public as an educational database.

In 2007 the South African embassy approached AFROTAK TV cyberNomads. Thanks to her expertise in the field of media and culture, Adetoun Küppers-Adebisi was able to represent the African diaspora Germany at the Europe Regional Consultative Conference , a body of the African Union . At the beginning of 2008, Adetoun Küppers-Adebisi was confirmed as media and press coordinator in the function of Vice-President of the Diaspora Committee Germany (mandate of the African Union). Since 2010, Afrotak has been a founding member of the African Union African Diaspora Germany 6. Region eV Also in 2009, Afrotak coordinated the input of the non-governmental organizations in the areas of culture and media for the Berlin - Brandenburg Migration Council and also the recommendations for the state action plan against racism and ethnic discrimination formulated for Berlin-Brandenburg.

In 2010 Afrotak was invited by the House of World Cultures to organize the opening for the discussion group of German cultural institutions. The discussion group was initiated by the House of World Cultures in order to address the need to integrate people of color and the African diaspora into cultural institutions. In 2009 and 2010, Afrotak held panel discussions on the topics of the identity of the African diaspora in Germany and the future of migration as well as in the Heinrich Böll Foundation Structural Racism in Academic Institutions and in Sport as part of Black History Month Berlin (in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy , the Berlin Senate for Integration and the African Union African Diaspora Germany ).

Publications

In 2004 Afrotak headed the project management for the first inventory of the African diaspora in Germany from a diaspora perspective. In cooperation with the anti-discrimination office, an expanded version was published in print as The Black Book . The book for the May Ayim Award 2004 was published by Orlanda Verlag. As an extra, a multimedia CD produced by Afrotak is included, which documents the audiovisual contributions to the competition.

The documentary Brothers Keepers Go East premiered at the Black International Cinema Festival 2005 in Berlin and accompanied the hip-hop activists from Brothers Keepers while they visited schools in eastern Germany and discussed racism with the students. In 2010 Afrotak published the Black Media Network documentation with the Black German Yello Pages . In 2010 the essay Negritude - black global liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries was published in the book Rassismus auf gut Deutsch - A critical reference work on racist language acts .

Awards

2011 Audience Prize - Media Competition - Cultural Collisions / House of World Cultures / Berlin
2010 Best Practice Educational Projects - 3rd International Holocaust Congress, Berlin
2010 Best Practice Project - Innovative Culture & Media Strategies for Integration / German InterKultur-Kongress / Bochum
2009 RESPECT Award / Advice for Democracy - Berlin Senate
2008 Best Media Project / Alliance for Democracy & Tolerance of the Federal Government
2006 Named among the 50 most important projects of the African Diaspora / African Heritage Magazin, Hamburg
2005 Best German Media Project / African Youth Foundation Bonn
2004 May Ayim Award - The 1st Pan-African International Black German Literature Award Germany - awarded as a project to commemorate the slave trade and its abolition by the UNESCO Chapter Germany

Mentions

2005 Honorable mention of the Bremen Peace Prize

literature

Music revolt, migration and politics with a focus on black music in Germany. In: Marvin Oppong (ed.): Migrants in German politics. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17057-2 .
Negritude - black global liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. In: Adibeli Nduka-Agwu, Antje Lann Hornscheidt (ed.): Rassismus auf gut Deutsch - A critical reference work on racist language acts. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-86099-643-0 .
2004 Brothers Keepers Go East. DVD 25 min, premiere at the Black International Cinema Festival Berlin, documentary film of the Brothers Keepers school tour through the East of the Republic, production, publisher: AFROTAK TV cyberNomads
Michael Küppers-Adebisi, Peggy Piesche (Eds.): May Ayim Award 2004. Book and multimedia CD. Orlanda Verlag cyberNomads, Berlin, ISBN 3-936937-21-4 .
AFROTAK TV cyberNomads with ADB Koeln (ed.): The Black Book, Cologne and Berlin, Black Presence in Germany Middle Ages to the Present. IKO publishing house, ISBN 3-88939-745-X .
Federal Center for Political Education (Ed.): African Diaspora in Germany. Online dossier, editing: AFROTAK TV cyberNomads.

Web links

Individual evidence

[1] African Diaspora in Germany - Online Dossier, Editor: AFROTAK TV cyberNomads, Editor: Federal Agency for Civic Education

[2] ttp://cybernomaden.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/black-german-yellow-pages-black-german-yello-pages-panafrikan-adressbook-online-directory-from-germany/

[3] Review of: Racism in good German.