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From Ama Ata Aidoo enters The Black Infrastructure Trust

In a searing 1987 interview, Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo looked squarely into the camera and said:

“Since we met you people 500 years ago, look at us, we’ve given everything, and you are still taking. Where would the whole Western world be without Africa — our cocoa, our timber, our gold, our diamonds, our platinum, our whatever. Everything you are is us. And in return for all of this, what have we got? Nothing. Nothing.”

Her words strip away the polite lies of history. For five centuries, Africa and her children have fueled the engines of the West:

• The Middle Passage carried millions into slavery, generating trillions in stolen labor.
• Colonialism and extraction stripped the continent of natural resources, enriching Europe and America.
• Postcolonial systems of debt, trade imbalance, and cultural domination ensured the theft continued.

And what did we receive in return? Not development. Not respect. Not repair. Instead: indoctrination against ourselves, infectious diseases brought across oceans, and a literature that declared us less than human.

Ama Ata Aidoo did not exaggerate. She simply named the truth.

For generations, we have spoken the truth about our oppression. We have pointed to the theft, to the lies, to the violence of white supremacy. Yet often, that’s where the conversation ends — at lament.

The problem is that naming the wound does not heal the wound. Naming the theft does not stop the theft. If all we do is recite our suffering, the world nods and moves on.

Ama Ata Aidoo gave us the foundation: the problem, in all its brutal clarity. But the question before us is — what comes next?

The ultra-rich, the very people who sit atop this system of extraction, pass down to their children a simple wealth-building playbook. It rests on three words: Hold. Borrow. Die.

• Hold. Buy appreciating assets — stocks, real estate, businesses. Never sell. Wealth compounds quietly, untaxed, across decades.
• Borrow. Need cash? Don’t sell. Borrow against those assets. Loans aren’t taxed. Liquidity without liability.
• Die. When they pass away, tax law resets the value. Children inherit wealth with minimal tax. Dynasties are born.

This is not genius. It’s not even secret. It’s simply strategy, repeated generation after generation — and it works because they act collectively within families and financial systems designed to preserve their wealth.

The Black Infrastructure Trust (BIT) exists to take that same playbook and adapt it for us — not as individuals scrambling for survival, but as a people committed to liberation.

Here is how BIT flips “Hold, Borrow, Die” into a collective pathway:

• Hold Together. BIT acquires land, housing, businesses, and investments on behalf of its members. Instead of wealth slipping through our hands, it is held in trust, appreciating in value, untouched by extraction.
• Borrow Together. Instead of selling off assets, BIT leverages its holdings to borrow capital. That capital does not disappear into yachts and vanity projects. It funds childcare centers, affordable housing, schools, and medical clinics — infrastructure that directly serves our people.
• Pass It On Together. Wealth is not drained into private estates or lost at death. It remains within the Trust, preserved and expanded for future generations. Each child born into our community inherits access to this collective legacy.

Ama Ata Aidoo told us: “Everything you are is us.” She reminded the West that its modern wealth is built on our backs, our land, our resources.

The task before us is to take her indictment and turn it into a blueprint. If everything they are is us, then everything we need to be free is also within us.

The next 500 years cannot look like the last 500. Where our ancestors were forced to give everything and get nothing, we will now hold everything together and build wealth that cannot be stolen.

This is the work of the Black Infrastructure Trust.