Obama on Africa
Obama talk about Africa’s endemic problem with corrupt leadership. We just spent a week with Gretchen’s brother, who lives and teaches in Tanzania, and after hearing his stories, this speech comes like a breath of fresh air.
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michael
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aly hawkins 7:55 am on 11 July 2009 Permalink
He’s the first American president, I think, who could deliver a message like that and not be written off immediately.
As much as I believe in the post-colonial West’s responsibility to post-colonial Africa, Africans must recognize their responsibilities to themselves and the rest of the world, if we are ever to get past the paternalism at the heart of the colonial project from the outset.
My high-school friend Erik Hersman, a web developer and TED fellow (and sometime AddRd commenter, before he got ridiculously busy), blogs about some of these issues at White African. (Incidentally, he also consulted with Obama’s team on the texting thing they did in Ghana.)