Obama talks straight to Africa

Why President Obama's tough message to Africa was well-received

President Obama has issued a tough challenge to Africa, said Rwanda’s New Times. On his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as U.S. president, Obama last week delivered “a stern message” to all Africans. Take responsibility for yourselves, he said in Ghana; stop blaming the West for all your problems, and start blaming your own corruption. “No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top,” Obama said. “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny—and now is the time for it to end.” Most important, this son of a Kenyan father took aim at our worst trait: tribalism. He told us to shed “the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one’s family, tribe, or circle, with little regard for the public good.”

Obama has personal experience with that kind of clannishness, said Rasna Warah in Kenya’s Daily Nation. When he came to Kenya as a young man, his siblings, cousins, and aunts depressed him with their stories of how they could not start businesses or get good jobs because they lacked the right connections or the money to buy them. Obama was truly upset by their plight. But he was further upset when they pestered him for money. It’s hard to feel close to your relatives when they seem to be using you. More broadly, “Obama is seeking a departure from the business-as-usual donor-recipient relationship, particularly with regard to Africa, because he knows how this relationship has distorted his own relationship with his ancestral land.” He has written of “how suffocating the demands of family ties and tribal loyalties could be, with distant cousins constantly asking for favors.”

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