SAN FRANCISCO — His Excellency Dr. Macaulay Kalu, Secretary-General of the African Union 6th Region Global, praised the new five year climate change deals between Kenya, Nigeria and the U.S. state of California during the Sixth Region Sunday virtual town hall Dec. 28, 2025.
Kalu explained to a global online audience that the AU6RG has a mandate to find those kinds of mutually beneficial ties to achieve the goals of Africa 2063. The Sixth Region includes Africans living outside the continent and has now been given positions in the governance structure of the African Union.
The Secretary General responded to Samuel Assefa, director of land use and climate innovation for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who began the program with news of the five year deal between Nigeria and California signed in Brazil between Tenioye Majekodunmi, director-general of the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) and Newsom at the COP30 climate change conference.
Assefa and Toks Omishaiken, California transportation secretary, negotiated the deals over the past 18 months through trips to and from Nigeria and Kenya, along with Dr. Gary May, chancellor of University of California-Davis.
The Kenya deal with President William Ruto involved the creation of Africa’s first sustainable transit research center, in partnership with UC-Davis.
The Nigeria deal includes the involvement of the Bay Area Council, the largest employers in Northern California, and opening of an innovation center for Nigerian entrepreneurs to access venture capital in San Francisco.
Sixth Region Sunday credited the role of African-American churches to spur the Pan African goals of the African Union, long before its creation. Lott Carey returned to Africa in 1820 to open a church in Liberia. The founder of the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, GA, the oldest Black church in the nation, went to Jamaica to found the Ethiopian Church of Jamaica.
AME Bishop Alexander Walters chaired the first Pan-African Congress in 1900 in London
Pastor Mike McBride, founder of LiveFree USA, addressed the readiness of today’s church for the challenges of today. The pastor of The Way Christian Church in Berkeley was a key figure in the recent We Ain’t Buyin’ It consumer campaign over the Thanksgiving weekend with LaTosha Brown.
Rev. McBride said more than 800 Black pastors are convening Jan. 15-17 at the church of Rev. Jamal Bryant in Atlanta for a State of the Black Church followed by months of training on a host of domestic and international challenges.
Rev. Ladi Peter Thonpson, AU6RG director of peace and security, said the meeting had been needed for decades. He is also general overseer of Living Waters Church in Nigeria.
Thompson said past efforts at reunion had faltered because of a failure to address the centuries of programming which had sown division between the streams of the Diaspora. He suggested that the 6th Region had a role to play in designing the “conciliation before the reconciliation.”
Blackmoney.com executive editor John William Templeton urged all faith traditions to see the divine imprint of such events as Watchnight on Dec. 31, when in 1862 Black churches prayed for the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which led to three Constitutional Amendments.
The anniversary of the 13th Amendment is the marker for the International Decade for Peoples of African Descent, which has just been extended for a second decade.
Templeton also noted the best practices of the Central Brooklyn Economic Development Corp. in New York City’s Brooklyn borough, which is successfully reducing violence through community-driven economic development.
CBEDC Executive Director LaShawn Allen Muhammad toured Black women buying a building to open a restaurant and theater as well as the completion of the 11-story Glenmore Manor featuring the Bville Hub.
Secretary General Kalu emphasized that solutions are readily available throughout the Diaspora and encouraged civic, economic, spiritual and educational organizations to engage with the African Union 6th Region Global at au6rg.org