On the 26th December 2004, a massive earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale exploded on the seabed of the Indian ocean near the western edge of Indonesia. Within hours this earthquake had wreaked havoc in at least eleven countries in the immediate vicinity with a series of giant Tsunamis whose tentacles reached over a broad area as far away as Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Madagascar and Mauritius, some 3000 miles away on the Eastern shores of Africa.

Many commentators are calling this Earthquake Tsunami the worst "natural" disaster ever experienced in world history - at least in modern times. It is estimated that around 160,000 people have died, millions have been made homeless and destitute and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of businesses have been destroyed. Some observers predict that the final figure will be closer to 200,000 dead, providing opportunistic mass diseases such as cholera do not get a chance to take advantage of the resultant sanitation problems.

Admirably, people all over the world have risen to the challenges presented by this enormous human disaster and are pouring in materials, foodstuffs, cash and even volunteering their services to try and alleviate some of the hardships of the survivors of this huge tragedy.

Over $2 billion has been pledged for the rescue and rebuilding effort so far, including $500,000,000 from Japan alone, which is almost twice the next largest contribution from the US of $350,000,000. As the sheer scale of the disaster emerges, more and more countries are pledging aid to Tsunami ravaged Asian countries including Kenya whose own coastline was also hit by the raging waves which displaced over 50,000 and killed over 200 in neighbouring Somalia.

Commentators estimate that it will take years, if not decades, for countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka to recover from this disaster both economically and demographically.

No doubt this Earthquake Tsunami is indeed a horrendous disaster. By far the greatest loss to all concerned are the human casualties, the 160,000 to 200,000 who died and their grieving families. My deepest sympathy and condolence goes out to the survivors and all those who have lost relatives, friends and colleagues as a result.

That said, I would like you to come with me and take a closer look at the disaster in its global context from a Global African perspective:

It has been common knowledge for over ten years now (and the situation has grown much, much worse in the past five years), that an African child below the age of five dies every 3 (three) seconds on the continent. That means every week 201,600 African children don’t get to celebrate their 5th birthday. Every year ten and a half million (10,483,200) African children perish, some through curable and preventable diseases such as malaria, small pox, chicken pox, measles, whooping cough, dysentery, some through malnutrition, and others through combinations of neglect, starvation, poisoning, political mismanagement, local wars and deliberate genocidal policies of criminal, puppet governments and enemy sponsored NGOs.

Of course, we are not taking into consideration another twenty million or so annual deaths including: the millions of older children between the ages of five and fifteen; greater numbers of young adults of prime procreative age who are being sacrificed on the killing fields of Kongo, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, etc.; the growing millions each year, falsely accused of carrying the AIDS/HIV virus, the majority of whom are suffering from curable and preventable diseases but who are being dumped on the medical scrapheap to die as bad, terminal and therefore untreatable.

This means, in human terms, Africa is haemorrhaging from a disaster much greater in scale than two Asian Earthquake Tsunamis each and every week, year in and year out - and Global Africa, the people whose future is being destroyed on a daily basis say nothing and do nothing.

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