I have been blessed in many ways and one of those is to have been born in Africa for me a great treasure house of stories. I have been researching it since my infancy reading about it talking to men and women who have spent their lives in this land living it as I have and loving it as I do. I write almost entirely from my own experience.

I live with one foot in the sand and one in the snow. There's European egocentricity and the African opposite. I normally say that my African experience has made me a better European.

The Klan had used fear intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way.

So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

You see Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and if we're honest conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

Education particularly higher education will take Africa into the mainstream of globalization.

One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe it has been accepted but not in Africa and the developing countries.

You cannot blame the mismanagement of the economy or the fact that we have not invested adequately in education in order to give our people the knowledge the skills and the technology that they need in order to be able to use the resources that Africa has to gain wealth.

When I walk up on that shore in Florida I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late I can still live my dreams.'

When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn't afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

I mean in the South African case many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community people who went to church on Sunday every Sunday.

I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.

I'm the whitest guy you will ever meet. The first time I saw an African-American my dad had to tell me to stop staring.

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful often urgent and essentially life-affirming but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

As a gay Jewish white South African I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are.

It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.

The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible at least on the scale it occurred.

As far as those kinds of things I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic ' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor ' it's crucial to say that.

Hollywood needs to recognise all shades of African American beauty.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.