In these days when Chocó is under water and the problems of violence seem to repeat themselves in a loop, Paula Marcela Moreno, who was the first Afro minister in Colombia, remembers a conversation a few years ago with the Nobel Prize winner in economics James Robinson when visiting this department, one of the most paradoxical in the country: with enormous wealth and diversity, it is at the same time mired in poverty and inequality. “‘There are people who benefit from the fact that Chocó does not work, it is on purpose,’ he told me,” she says at the Bogotá headquarters of the Manos Visibles Corporation, the foundation she created 15 years ago.

Moreno is determined to change that assumed fate of Chocó and go against the current. Hold a technology meeting in a department where there is not always connectivity, where many municipalities have intermittent power? She says yes. Why can’t we talk about technology, robotics, innovation? Why does exclusion continue? Why do they continue to see us as different? She asks herself. With that determination, she says, Quibdó, the capital of Chocó, will become “the first Black Smart City in Colombia.” For three days, starting today, it will be the epicenter of AfroInnovaTech, which brings together 12 technological leaders from the African diaspora to talk about racial equity through technology.

Read more at: https://english.elpais.com/international/women-leaders-of-latin-america/2024-12-06/paula-moreno-culture-and-technology-are-key-to-racial-equity.html