As the WSF gears up for Nairobi, Kenya in Jan. 2007 it is good and appropriate to reiterate the broad principles that inform its steady growth into a powerful platform of social movements from around the globe, challenging neo-liberal globalization, and to figure out what the real hot button issues of the moment will be and how these issues will find thematic articulation in the program and activities in Nairobi. Doing this will require a delicate mixture of stocktaking, collective reflection and realistic anticipation of what the forum promises to offer to those who rely on it as a defense against neo-liberal degradation of human dignity.

The increased tempo of social democratic struggle of the African people in the last few years has stimulated a great deal of political discussion among those in the very front line of an upsurge that is characterized by the richness and diversity of social movements adorning the African political landscape. Peasants in the countryside, Slum dwellers, Workers in the factories, youth in the townships, mass and underground activists, radical intellectuals, women and militants at all levels are impatiently groping for instruments of change. With renewed determination they seek answers to the pressing strategic and organizational questions as to how to scale up popular resistance against neo-liberal capitalism which they, more than ever before, put down to the main causes of the their unrelenting plights.

Over the last few years, the World Social Forum has come to represent the most formidable bulwark of popular resistance to neo-liberal globalization; thanks to the illustrious display of ideological focus and organizational capacity among the Latin American social movements. It has given and continues to give hope to the peoples of the South that the neo-liberal world order, as we experience it today, must give way to a better world. And that, given the high concentration of its victims in our continent, Africa could very well turn out to be the graveyard of some of its most lethal policy diktats. Besides giving hope to the peoples of the world that another world is in deed possible and actually desirable, it has succeeded in pointing, with a sure and steady finger, to a better world organized around the imperatives of justice, subsidiarity, equity and social solidarity. The hope is gaining in realistic expectation as a result of the successful construction of a dynamic space that is increasingly allowing for a wide variety of social movements across the world to:

• Articulate and elaborate their respective agenda in direct relation to their grievances and corresponding opposition to neo-liberal globalization,
• Listen (to others), digest, internalize the relevant concerns, communicate , and exchange strategies on how to bring about the desirable alternatives,
• Learn ( from others)and about new alternatives for opposing neo-liberal machinations,
• Agglutinate and build viable solidarity around common issues and agenda, and
• Prepare to engage with political-economic adversities arising from the dominance of neo-liberalism

All these, have been guided by a charter that allows for flexible consistency and effective dynamism in the management of the entailed space. Porto Alegre and Mumbai stand out as unmistakable beacons in the short but momentous history of the WSF process. Together with the ongoing polycentric experiences they have reaffirmed with concerted reflections and actions that another world is not only possible but also necessary. But most important it has provided and enriched the sites where the increasing manifestation of the same principles has found consistent if not creative expression of new ways of doing politics. The polycentric experiences, subscribing to and consolidating the all important principle of subsidiary in decentralization of social mobilisation on a regional down to local scales, have unleashed social-reconstructive energies which continue to promise a great potential in scaling up of the global build-up of strategic capacity to resist and defeat imperialist domination. It is in faithful continuation and ramification of this spirit that Nairobi 2007 is poised to be the first WSF event to benefit from a steady build-up of national, sub-regional and polycentric social forum processes; with the potential of making 2007 WSF a unique milestone in the militant history of the Forum.

Like Mumbai, Nairobi cannot afford to be merely a faithful replication of Porto Alegre. Having learned from both, Nairobi must seek to extend the frontiers of resistance and lay the ground for building an offensive capacity against capitalism. By remaining a space of encounter and debate, a space of sharing ideas, proposals and experiences Nairobi must bring the unique concerns of the African agenda and history of resistance against imperialist domination to bear on the development of global strategies for articulating struggles on different planes and fronts, particularly in respect of those concerns that are shared with other peoples of the world. Such concerns and challenges will need to to build on and, of necessity, reflect the unique opportunity for and capacities of the African social movements to:

• Articulate and elaborate the hot-button issues and long-term perspectives in respect to the pressing challenges facing the continent and its people,
• Listen to and exchange experiences with other social movements from the rest of the world through communication kiosks, leafleteering, workshops etc.,
• Learn from and seek solidarity with activists who subscribe to the WSF charter
• Enhance their strategic capacities in constructing alternative social development paradigms that are capable of guaranteeing justice, equity and prosperity for all by exploring and entering the twilight zone of social visioning around the outlines of a new dispensation, and
• Develop strategic and political capacity to animate widespread citizen action against neo-liberalism.

Considering the WSF will be taking place on the African continent for the first time, it will be important that the choice of the themes intended for the common spaces reflect the broader concerns of the global community. The entailed activities should be aimed at giving the required visibility to the methods of presenting the debates along with the treatment that the themes in question have so far received on the basis of the historical process and accumulation of political experience by the World Social Forum across the globe. The organized themes should set the tone of the forum for as many participants as can be attracted to Nairobi. By that same token they should form the framework within which to the co-organized activities should reinforce and also consolidate the campaigns and guarantee a plurality of political perspectives and engagements. But most important, both the co-organized and other activities will need to be seen as containing a visible dialogue dimension or a solid and interactive interface between the WSF process and the African social movements in general and the Kenyan civil society in particular.

The formulation of a thematic as well as a political framework for the Nairobi event, if it is to remain creatively faithful to the great ideals and principles of the WSF charter and if it has to extend the strategic frontiers of global resistance against megalomania capitalism, must not only speak to the world-wide challenges facing the victims of neo-liberal globalization but also connect with and, whenever appropriate, bring on board concerns that cut to the chase the social transformation needs and tasks of the African societies. But most important, such a framework must seek to harness the social mobilisation capacities of the African social movements in solidarity with counterparts from the rest of the world. It is in pursuit of the underlying objective that the following thematic areas of concern should wedge out into the strategic articulation and construction of the thematic and the political spaces of the Nairobi WSF:

• Urban and Rural Mis-settlements
• Peace and conflict
• Cultural and spiritual reconstruction
• Trade, aid and debt and other multi- and bi-lateral issues
• Land policy and Landlessness
• Alternatives
• Gender (as a cross-cutting concern)
• Youth unemployment

Pragmatic articulation of the above themes into a multi-level cluster of activities and the eventual dovetailing them with other self-organized spaces will, no doubt, provide a unique opportunity for the African social movements to build the necessary capacity for self-organization of citizens into powerful global social alliances and peoples unity and engagement that recognizes, respects, and turns differences into a formidable strategic asset in the long-drown struggle against neo-liberal globalisation