African-Danish Network was established by a group of African immigrants in corporation with our Danish friends in 2007 in Rantzausgade 13, DK-9000 Aalborg. We started our discussion by asking ourselves about the concept of integration. How it was defined and how should it be defined. Of course, we had different views and opinion about the concept, but our discussion ended up with a consensus that integration is a complex and multifaceted concept, where variables such as culture, education, employment, social and economic are necessary to be included in order to get a better understanding of the concept.

We all agreed that there is a need to engage in the issue area, if we need to make a difference. We then created a platform for the promotion of integration opportunities for African Diasporas, Danes and other ethnic and minority groups in our community, but where to start, it was a puzzle. Well, we started by looking at cultural integration and exchange where we succeeded in creating a safe environment for cultural understanding, friendship and social network. We have also learned that being different is not necessarily a weakness, but rather a strength in itself.

As time goes, we managed to enlarge our activities to include among other things, capacity building and networking and most importantly engage in social and developmental priorities and strategies from an African perspective. With this package, we are busy finding different strategic models of how we could reach out to the most marginalized and the poor in Africa, including where we could effectively come in and make a difference.