LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson has called for an African version of the Marshall Plan, the postwar rebuilding of Europe, during a visit to Nigeria.
Jackson told a legal gathering on Tuesday that such a plan would help lift African countries out of the troubles of their colonial past.
Jackson says Africa “got free, but we didn’t get equal.”
Jackson later acknowledged such a plan would require accountability, especially in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, where experts estimate as much as $380 billion has been embezzled from oil revenues since it gained its independence from Britain in 1960.
The Marshall Plan was a roughly $13 billion package put forward by the U.S. to rebuild Europe after World War II.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.