New York's Africa Center gets fundraising push

LAGOS, Nigeria – Fundraising efforts have been launched for The Africa Center in New York City, a non-profit, multidisciplinary institution that provides a gateway for engagement with contemporary Africa, and a platform for the most compelling content from the continent.

Halima Aliko Dangote

The goal of the Africa Center is to help people understand and engage with contemporary Africa.

Halima Aliko Dangote was recently appointed the president of The Africa Center in New York City with the major responsibility of raising capital for the centre. The goal is to raise funds to complete the centre building in New York.

A recent fundraising event took place in Nigeria, hosted by Aliko Dangote Foundation.

The centre is located at One Museum Mile, in East Harlem, Manhattan. The new location represents a cultural gateway to Harlem the traditional African- American neighborhood in New York. The building, designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern, is the first museum building built on New York's Museum Mile since the completion of the Guggenheim in 1959.

While construction is being finalised, the Africa Center continues to present pop up events in its new space until the building is completed. It will serve as a cultural centre, and will make the museum accessible to a wide range of people from the world over, thus solidifying the museum's presence as one of the most challenging and diverse art institutions in the U.S.

The new building will encompass approximately 90,000 square feet (8,400 m2) with 16,000 square feet (1,500 m2) of exhibition space, as well as a theatre, education centre, library, classrooms, event space, restaurant and gift shop. The growth into the cultural centre has been spearheaded by, among others, Hadeel Ibrahim, daughter of Mo Ibrahim, and Chelsea Clinton.
The focus areas of The Africa Centre’s programming include:

Business: The centre will help the private sector to navigate Africa’s 53 distinct business climates, will make hard-to-obtain data available and understandable, and will facilitate peer-to-peer introductions. The Center will help potential partners find each other, and share best practices from the continent.
Policy: The centre will focus its efforts on linking research capacity with change agents on the ground in Africa, building transcontinental teams to find policy solutions. They will also work to build a broader constituency for good policy through educational initiatives that aim to bring basic “Africa literacy” to a wide range of audiences.
Culture: Building on its history as the Museum for African Art, the centre will be a home for exhibitions, performances and showings of visual, performing, and digital art from Africa.

Companies such as Dangote are at the forefront of re-defining for the world what African business is and what Africans can accomplish. The ambition of the Center is to become a major rallying point on African issues globally.