Viviane Ogou Cordi, researcher
«I was born in Barcelona, to a Catalan mother and a father from the Ivory Coast. I do social research and consulting in the field of international relations, migration, youth and geopolitics in the Sahel. I am founder and president of Puerta de África.
What are you passionate about in life?
To be very honest, I have very few hobbies. What excites me is the idea of progress in general, thinking that more and more people are going to live well, that within 30 or 40 years in Africa there will be many people who are going to live well, who will have technological innovations, structured cities. and that young people will be able to go to school.
You aim for progress in Africa, but what is your connection with the continent?
I have grown up with my parents’ stories about the continent. My mother moved to the Ivory Coast when she was 35 years old. He had previously traveled to some countries and spent several years there working in cooperation. He set up a small medical NGO. And my father, who is from the Ivory Coast, was studying at university when they met. They came here and experienced many things, including the economic crisis and the immigration law. It took me many years to get to know the African continent, but I grew up with all the stories they told me and with my father telling me a lot about the Ivory Coast. I think that’s why I always look towards Africa. Also, because I personally feel that I am indebted to the continent for all the opportunities I have. I feel like I have to walk for them and with them.
What people have been an inspiration in your life and career?
The first person who was an inspiration to me was Barack Obama. When you are small and of African descent it seems that everything is a no, that you will not be able to do anything, because you have no references. They always tell you, “Go back to your country,” and what you see is that most people who look like you are in a precarious situation. What do Afro-descendant children dream of? If we ask them, they will answer that they want to be footballers, singers or politicians, because they are the main types of references we have. Great politicians like Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Malcolm Revolutionary and transformative references that, in moments of maximum vulnerability and absolute injustice, transform the system. And then we meet football players, basketball players, some tennis players, athletes and singers. But when you see a black president running America, you think you can be anything. Other people who have inspired me a lot have been Aya Chebbi, who was Special Envoy of the African Union for Youth, and also my grandmother, who traveled around the world and is an example of improvement and transformation for me.
It’s funny, but I know many people of African descent in Spain who, like you, are dedicated to the social sciences.
If we look at the faculties and the percentage of young black Africans in them, there are many in the social sciences. I believe that we are communities with a great need to transform our environment because, either we grow up seeing how our parents pass money every month to families, and you see that there is a need for return, or we grow up with parents having a bad time, or we grow up very far from our cultures and perceiving rejection for being African. Because who wants to be African here? Nobody wants to. There is a narrative that constantly undervalues what is African. You see the photos of people arriving in boats and you don’t want to be that person. When you are little you don’t want to be associated with those people, what you want is to be the cool one in the class, you want people to love you, to invite you to birthdays. And those in the photos don’t seem like the kind of people they invite to birthdays. But when you grow up, something changes. You become aware and that rejection you felt turns into fury, but a positive fury that tells you that this must be changed, that the system must be transformed, reform everything that is not working. I think this feeling is something that unites us Afro-descendants a lot.
When you were a child, what did you dream of being in the future?
Since I was little in my house I have been encouraged to reflect on social inequalities. In my family there has always been a desire to dedicate ourselves to social causes and contribute our grain of sand to the world. First I wanted to be a doctor. Then, judge for children’s rights. I don’t know why it hit me there. Later I wanted to be a politician, and later a diplomat. Now what I want to be is an academic. That’s why I came to Madrid to study International Relations. From the first moment I decided to specialize in Africa, so I chose the continent every time I had to do a project in college. In the end I specialized in the Sahel and the conflict in Mali.
How was the Door to Africa Association born?
The germ is in 2017, with a group of friends, some from my scout group, others from the community of Sant’Egidio, who I met at some peace meetings, and others from the university. We wanted to create a youth center in Mali. Usually, after class, we would go out and have a beer and talk about the world. It was something we could do safely and we wanted other young people to also have a safe space where they could do whatever they wanted and talk about their history, their forms of organization or democracy. So we started researching Mali and started a project. We created a blog, organized talks, made bracelets and sold them to raise funds… We wanted to travel to the city of Sikasso, in the south of the country, to contact young people interested in having this space and work with the community to have an exchange with them and Help young people strengthen their leadership. But Mali was in the midst of an escalation of jihadism and it was extremely dangerous for a group of kids to go there. So we changed plans, we put out a magazine with positive ideas about Africa and created a group with young people from here and another, remotely, with young people from there. We started organizing summer courses and created the strongest project we have had so far, Ayoka Fellowship, funded by Casa África.
What is the profile of the people who participate in Puerta de África?
We have managed to bring together young Europeans from various ideological positions and, later, with young Africans. In general, we are people with social sensitivity. The organization needs to be virtual because some of us are in Madrid, others in Barcelona, in the Canary Islands, in Andalusia, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in the Ivory Coast and in Kenya. There is no way not to be virtual. We are a group of eight people and there is a group of about 20 very active. Together with the affiliated people, with whom we do things, we are about 300 people.
What would you say are the main achievements you have achieved so far?
Apart from different publications that we have published, we have organized three summer courses in which relevant people have participated, such as the president of the Nouakchott region or general directors of the African Union, who have sat down to talk with young activists. We have awarded scholarships to ten young people who have very diverse social projects. For example, that of Victor, a young refugee from the Congo in Uganda who has created a start-up to transform his refugee camp into a neighborhood. In addition, it is supporting many other young people so that they have the necessary tools to undertake and generate a local economy. Nor does it forget to work with the historical communities of the region, so that there is no segregation between neighborhoods. Then there is Mike, from Kenya, who during the pandemic, as people couldn’t leave their homes, digitized a whole series of services to avoid a crisis in his community. Or Amtu, a student representative in Ghana, who has a platform called She Lead to promote the entry of young women into politics. We are also in contact with other young people from social movements and climate activists in Mali. In the end, it’s about young people supporting young people. They are small victories, a base from which to continue working and growing.
We have talked about your past and what you are doing from Puerta de África. I would like to ask you where you imagine yourself in ten years.
In ten years I think I would love to be consulting for African governments. I would love to be supporting African countries in matters of peace and citizen participation.
