Old Friend, We Made This for You

This collection of poetry is a plea and a gift from two black youths to Africans of the continent and the Diaspora.

We sought to explore the broadest themes and most salient of issues facing Africans.

Through these poems and essays we offer our views, ideas, questions, and art first and foremost to our people, our 'Old friends'. "Old Friend, we made this for you" is our contribution as two, young, black, ready poets to the discourse on Africa and Africa's redemption.

Marshall and Aganga met in secondary school in Botswana.

Shortly after sharing poems and ideas they began working on a project that reflected a Pan-Afrikan vision from both the African and African Diaspora's perspective.

That project evolved into a collection of poems called "Old Friend We Made This For You" . Olayemi Aganga born in Nigeria and living most of his life in Botswana has a unique understanding of the issues facing the continent.

Living in Sub-Saharan Africa he has witnessed the regions plight with Aids, violence and poverty and has first-hand experience of what it means to be an expatriate Nigerian in Southern Africa. As such his poems are well rooted in the politics, culture and the urban experience on the continent. Yannick Marshall born in Canada to black Caribbean parents has a firm understanding of the Caribbean immigrant experience and what it means to be black and a descendant of slaves in North America.

As a member of the black conscious African Diaspora his poems reflect the slave and post-slavery experience and the slave's mystic romanticism of the continent.