USAID's Office of Transition Initiative (OTI) talks to Mahamadou Diakite, who works on the Mali Transition Initiative for OTI's implementing partner AECOM. Mahamadou. who was selected as a fellow for the 2014 Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), discusses Mali and his hope to be the change he wants to see.
USAID talks to Mahamadou at MIT's Build Peace Conference
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Video Transcript
0:13 My name is Mahamadou Diakite I'm from Mali and I work for AECOM on the
0:20 Mali Transition Initiative program that is financed by USAID.
0:28 The country in 2012 fell into a big crisis of the mix of rebellion, military coup, jihadist
0:37 invasion, which created a lot of division within the local population.
0:43 Before the coup, Mali was seen as the example of West Africa. We were seen as a young democracy
0:49 when everything was going perfectly. The new challenge is how to bring the country to the
0:55 previous state it was before. As a young person my hope is to first fulfill
1:03 my responsibility not to only be that person who complains about things and not do anything
1:09 about it. I first give myself that challenge. Instead of complaining about what other people
1:16 do, first have that reflection on yourself. Am I making the changes, the right changes
1:24 sometime they say, you are the changes you want to see in life. That is my first hope.
1:31 The second is I hope to bring the right changes that Mali needs. How are we making people's
1:40 lives better?
November 1, 2011
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