US President Barack Obama Hits Out at Kenya Over Corruption

Even before President Obama arrived for his visit to Ghana, Kenya was feeling the heat.
In a meeting with African leaders attending the G8 summit in Italy on Friday, Obama vilified Kenya as a country where bribery and corruption were the way of life and institutions had failed.

Deputy National Security Advisor Michael Froman was quoted by the ABC News online edition saying: "His cousin in Kenya can’t find a job without paying a bribe, and that’s not the fault of the G-8."

And he was not done with Kenya. He added that companies "can’t operate without paying, in some parts of Africa, a 25 per cent fee off the top in bribes".

ABC News quoted the aide saying: "Everyone knows that his father was from Kenya, that he still has relatives living in poverty, and that while he’s President of the US, he feels poverty in a very personal way because of his family situation." 

Froman recounted that the President explained that when his father, Barack Obama Senior, went to the US, Kenya’s GDP was higher than Korea’s.

"Obviously, much has happened since then and he wanted to make it clear that the problems that Africans face weren’t just a product of colonialism or past history," Froman said. 

At a Press conference after the meeting, Obama said: "The point I was making was that my father travelled to the United States a mere 50 years ago yet now I have family members who live in villages. They themselves are not going hungry, but they live in villages where hunger is real. This is something I understand in very personal terms. And if you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say part of the issue is the institutions aren’t working for ordinary people. So, governance is a vital concern that has to be addressed."

Civil society
By bringing up the example of South Korea, Obama said, he was trying to make the point that "the South Korean government, working with the private sector and civil society, was able to create a set of institutions that provided transparency, accountability and efficiency that allowed for extraordinary economic progress. And that there was no reason why many African countries could not do the same."

The US leader said the partnership between governments and the private sector and civil society — whether it is over food security or other development ideas — requires local governments to take responsibility seriously.
Froman recalled Obama saying: "This isn’t a time to make excuses. And that it is important to join together in a clear-eyed way."

When Obama met the leaders of Egypt, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Libya and Ethiopia, he spoke about his personal connections to both Africa and poverty, and according to a top White House aide, "you could have heard a pin drop".

After describing a food security initiative that the President and other G-8 leaders have been working on, Obama talked about development and the importance of governance.

The US President, Froman said, pointed out that it was important to think about people on the ground who are focused, not about who is at fault in Africa, but on how to survive, succeed and provide for their families.
He emphasised the importance of transparency, openness, and efficiency.

It’s important, Obama told the African leaders, that development programmes are implemented so they "reach people who really need them, that assistance actually gets to the farmers and the farmers benefit from this". 

Several people who were in the meeting said it was a very moving remark and thanked him for sharing his personal story with them. And I think it helped define the seriousness of the discussion and the importance of the subject."
  Thanks To Standard