The 5th African-African American Summit wants African-Americans to put their money where their mouths are. Mike Afrani reports.

Strengthen my hand to help Africa. As I travel to Congress and speak to the president, strengthen my hand. As I go to Europe and to Asia appealing for you, strengthen my hand. I will call on the world to support you, but strengthen my hand. Strengthen my hand, by ending corruption in the nations of Africa. Strengthen my hand by stopping lining your own pockets. Strengthen my hand and let democracy work. I will go anywhere, do anything to strengthen bonds between Africans and African-Americans and to stimulate Africa's growth and economic development. The connection that we had hoped for has been made and the bridge that we started to build together is newly completed. But strengthen my hand."

If he were not a reverend minister, Leon Sullivan would have been taken for a rabble rouser. His speeches can move mountains.

An African-American with his whole heart in Africa, the reverend is used to making stirring speeches. And how he stirred the souls out of 18 African presidents, the King of Swaziland, 12 US mayors, 33 US government officials and 5,000 local and international delegates at the closing session of the 5th African-African American summit held in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, in mid-May!

Eight days of passionate discussions on how to move Africa forward had distinguished the Accra summit (held between 15-22 May) from the four previous ones. And when it all came down to the closing speech, Rev Sullivan did not disappoint.

"Black power is no good without green power," he said, using the colour of the American dollar to underline the need for economic empowerment for all people of African descent.

Turning to the corporate delegates from 300 American and other companies around the world who attended the summit, he said: "What we have seen here in Ghana with these deliberations, presentations and plans, would have been believed impossible just a few years ago. But what amazing things we have seen here this week.

"From those who are here will come thousands and thousands more to see Ghana and other nations of this great continent. So we are going back to America as mayors, legislators, teachers, lawyers and youth leaders, to call on America to do more for Africa. The time has come for America to help Africa more.

"If America can help the rest of the world with billions and billions of our dollars - our tax dollars - to send it to Poland, Israel, and now to Kosovo and other parts of the world, then America can do more to help Africa, so that the children of Africa can proceed and become strong."

The reverend is an optimist. "Humanitarian Soldier" is his nickname. A former pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in Philadephia (from 1950 to 1988), he founded the Opportunities Industrisation Centre (OIC), a programme of training on a mass scale which now covers 130 US cities and 10 countries abroad - Ghana, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Liberia, Lesotho, South Africa, Poland, England and Togo.

He is the president of the International Foundation for Education and Self Help (IFESH), a non-profit organisation which hopes to train in the next decade 100,000 skilled workers, 100,000 farmers and five million people in literacy and health care.

The biennal African-African Summit is his brainchild. The first summit was held in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire in 1991. The objective was to find ways of improving the quality of life for Africans and African-Americans through joint ventures. Since then three other summits have been held in Gabon 1993, Senegal 1995 and Zimbabwe 1997.

This year's summit in Ghana was held under the theme: "Business, trade and investment", but the discussions covered a much wider field, including agriculture, mining, tourism, telecoms, industry, finance, environment, technology and energy.

America had a large presence at the summit, including a 33-member presidential delegation from the White House co-led by the US Secretary of Labour, Alexis M. Herman (the first African-American to serve in the post), and the Rev Jesse Jackson, President Clinton's special envoy for democracy and human rights in Africa.

Jackson, in another stirring speech, urged Africans and African-Americans to work together and take their struggle to a higher level.

"We must open the keyhole and see the door - there is a big Africa full of work and possibility," he said. "The world must hear that story. Africa deserves what Europe deserves - a formula. When Europeans come together, they don't discuss how white they are. They discuss formulas - the reconstruction formulas for access to capital... Lip service about Africa and African-Americans must be replaced with ship service, and romance with finance. We have to begin to build these shipping and finance connections."

Turning to America's Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after the Second World War, Jesse Jackson told the summit that the funds were not a gift. "They were invested in Europe's infrastructure - in its roads and bridges and ports, so Europe could be America's trading partner and Europe could be a trading market. We could not trade with Europe as long as it did not have infrastructure.

"All we want for Africa is nothing original. We want for Africa what has been enjoyed by Europe, because Africa has a market, raw materials, money, talent and land. That is enough to qualify to be a trading partner... Africa needs to be treated with dignity. It must not come to the table as beggars, it must come as partners. Africa has subsidised the world, its raw materials serviced America, it serviced Europe and, therefore, deserves a place at the table," Jackson added to tumultous cheers from the delegates.

It was a day for the reverends. Not quite. Rosa Whitaker, the US Assistant Trade Representative, ensured that the reverends did not run away with all the accolades. She told the summit how Africa was now the fastest-growing region of the world and how the continent stood as a natural partner for growth and development with the US.

"American investors are now taking a new look at Africa, and many for the first time," she said.

She reminded the summit of the natural link between Africa and America. The first 20 Africans were auctioned as slaves in the US in 1619 at James Town, Virginia. Today "we have more than 30 million [actually 32m] Americans of African descent, more than five million new [African] immigrants and first-generation Americans of African origin. Until recently, this partnership was rather dormant."

According to Whitaker, Africa now enjoys a "priority position" on the American foreign policy agenda. "US exports to Africa grew rapidly than US exports to any other region in the world and are now 45% greater than our exports to all the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. America imports more crude oil from Africa than it does from the Persian Gulf."

Figures show that American direct investment in Africa netted the country a total of $1.5bn in 1998 - a 22% return on the investments as against 11% return on US investments in Europe, 12% in Latin America and 13% in Asia. There are 100,000 American jobs tied to trade with Africa.

"We know Africa is rich in natural resources. 40% of the world's gold, 35% of the world's cobalt, titanium and other rich minerals in abundance, but it's precisely these kinds of minerals that will fuel the high-tech economy of the 21st century," the US Labour Secretary Alexis Herman chipped in.

But the host president, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, was not too happy with the high cost of doing business in Africa. "It is about 40% cheaper to ship a container of manufactured goods from Rotterdam in Holland to Dakar, a distance of 5,000 kms - than it is to ship the same container from Dakar to Bamako, a distance of 1,000 kms," Rawlings said. "Such a situation does not augur well for intra-African trade. Africa's economic emancipation has to be carried out primarily by the people of Africa themselves and therefore these costs must be tackled head on if Africa is to prosper."

Among the goals set by the summit is the forging of closer links between African-Americans and the mother continent for business and other ventures. The African-American dollar power now constitutes the 12th largest economy in the world, just behind Brazil and India. In 1997, the 32 million African-American population generated $400bn in aggregate income - three times larger than Africa's most advanced country, South Africa which registered slightly more than $115bn.

Since the first summit in Cote d'Ivoire in 1991, $500m in American investment has poured into Africa, covering companies like General Motors, Colgate Palmolive, Chevron and Pfize International.

But the emphasis is now on African-Americans themselves investing some of their green dollars in the motherland.