Celebrating our volunteers

Today we would like to celebrate the incredible work of our Sub-Saharan Africa Research Lead. Aside from overseeing our research in the Sub-Saharan African region, Mudadi Saidi is a deeply talented poet. His poetry has been featured in international anthologies, including A Breeze That Swept Me Away (SoulWriters Publications), From Here to There (Civic Leicester), and Canvas of Voices. He has authored four completed collections: The Theatre of Peace, No Place to Call, Ubuntu Afrika, and The Blood Black—which explore identity and resistance. As a refugee advocate and coordinator of the Art Yetu Program, Mudadi integrates arts-based approaches into humanitarian response and community healing. His recent poem 'The Reckoning' can be found below:

Oh Africa,

finally the truth emerges—

we were stripped bare,

our voices stolen,

our bodies dressed in shame.

Oh Africa,

at last someone stands,

President John Mahama,

and the continent rises,

proud of its champion,

this hero of our age.

You are what Gandhi was—

the restorer of peace,

the liberator of nations.

Today we take another stride,

turning back the tide of that ancient wound,

the trade in human souls.

Now the world admits:

this was a crime.

But the damage—

oh, the damage runs deep.

Who bears the weight of this reckoning?

The rulers or the ruled?

What price can settle such a debt?

They were robbed of schooling,

bound from freedom's door,

denied the very breath of life.

Chained. Locked. Hunted.

Tamed like beasts of burden.

No medicine for their wounds,

no shelter from the sun,

because their skin held darker earth.

You took them across the waters,

locked them in your machines,

made them bleed for your hunger,

stripped them of their names.

Today you speak of rights—

but where were you before?

Why did it take a Mahama

to remind you of your conscience?

The trade in Black flesh

has poisoned everything:

the land, the blood, the future.

Discrimination blooms where chains once rusted.

Economic war still wages,

and countless sorrows ripple still.

So if Europe turns its back,

if the powerful refuse to pay—

what law will answer then?