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Sunday 26 July 2015

Obama's Kenyan hit trip




If you're an American you possibly have no idea about this but President Obama just knocked it out of the park in Kenya.

Obviously the first "Kenyan-American" president was going to be well received but Obama's speeches addressing Kenya's problems and extolling its strengths and uplifting its future have been extremely well received. That is if my timeline of Kenyans on social media is anything to go by.

Kenya has a booming technology sector, which I have written about extensively, and Obama paid it a visit. The more that the rest of the world knows about African science and technology the better. He just boosted that.

In the speech above he raised a series of issues which the Kenyans I know know need to be raised. Issues like corruption, tribalism and the status of women.

Nancy Le Tourneau has noticed the Obama feminist foreign policy and noticed these clips from his speech:
Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century.

These are issues of right and wrong in any culture. But they're also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allow them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in the global economy.
I also think his staunch defence of LGBT rights in the context of human rights and of diversity as strength - which is what Obama did - will pay out across Africa. It absolutely did not derail the visit and anyone saying so is a fool.

There's a lead in in the video before his sis Auma appears to introduce him (and she's great) but the music in the stadium's pretty good. Heck, we are in Africa after all.

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