Obama goes to Mt. Kenya

President Barrack Obama’s ‘’invasion’’ of Kenya will be anchored in the shadows of Mt. Kenya, the mythical origin of Mumbi, ancestor of the Gikuyu people.  Coming in fresh from running last laps of 35-year diplomatic marathons with Iran and a 50-year one with Cuba, he will confront a virus sown over Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta […]

President Barrack Obama’s ‘’invasion’’ of Kenya will be anchored in the shadows of Mt. Kenya, the mythical origin of Mumbi, ancestor of the Gikuyu people.  Coming in fresh from running last laps of 35-year diplomatic marathons with Iran and a 50-year one with Cuba, he will confront a virus sown over Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta – founding-elder or ‘’Mzee’’ in Swahili of independent Kenya. Faced with the prospect of losing a looming 1969 general election to his socialist pro-land reform vice-president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenyatta turned to swearing busloads of Kikuyu to an oath that power must never allow the Luo to uproot political power from the ‘’House of Mumbi’’. The virus made Mumbi symbolise a growing taboo in Kenya’s politics, namely: that a Luo shall never become a president of Kenya.
That virus would grow into Kikuyu, Embu and Meru ethnic groups using political power to accumulate ownership of land inherited from European farmers; real estate; contracts and other ‘’dividends of Uhuru’’. The bitterness it brewed in excluded ethnic groups would explode in the horrendous December 2007 post-election violence.
Obama has the challenge of using the blood spilled by Al Shabaab terrorists in a supermarket, bars, a university campus, bus-stops, inside buses, and inside churches as curative antibiotic to rid Kenya of the Kenyatta; and put glue to the Kikuyu-Luo allergy. His luck is in a Luo father whose brilliance as government economist was valued ally of a Kikuyu Minister of Finance, and recent past President Mwai Kibaki.
This legacy should give President Obama elbow room to craft a Jomo Kenyatta-Oginga Odinga Pact which binds ‘’Gikuyu-Embu-Meru’’ elites to abandoning their notion of a ‘’divine right to rule Kenya’’; while the Opposition ‘’Luo-Majimbo’’ elites creatively embrace Old Man (Mzee) Kenyatta’s motto of assuming and using power ‘’without bitterness’’- hopefully, four more years after Uhuru Kenyatta’s current tenure.
Obama has recently invaded several African countries with what he calls ‘’Power Africa’’.  A formidable army of ELEVEN American government agencies are prosecuting the war of bringing electric power to a selected group of African countries, including Kenya and Ethiopia in eastern Africa, and Nigeria and Ghana in West Africa. This matter is yet to receive effective discourses and public interrogation. As infrastructure for supporting millions of SMEs, it is most welcome. It must, however, complement grand African dreams like Ethiopia’s ‘’Renaissance Dam’’, and the Hinga Dam in D.R. Congo in which South Africans have already invested.  America’s giants, like General Electric, must not be allowed to turn millions of Africans into rate serfs through future monopoly charges,
Obama preaches taking wealth to America’s middle class; taking health insurance to over 16 million formerly excluded America’s poor; and animating technological creativity among small entrepreneurs. This policy thrust was denied African peoples by European colonial exploiters and dictators; a policy which remained entrenched in the IMF and World Bank until China arrived over Africa’s skies. Obama should arrive as a warrior willing to compete with and not sabotage China’s touch in Africa’s road to industrialisation. In Kenya, Arap Moi regime of looting and wrecking capital investments and institutions lasted for 24 years. In Nigeria, the period 1979 to 2015 are said to be ‘’years that locusts ate’’. Obama should vigorously shake hands with new promoters of economic patriotism and ‘’Africa’s renaissance’’.
In this regard, his festival for women and youth entrepreneurs in Nairobi is most welcome. Lagos, Accra, Kigali, Kampala and Nairobi are hosting explosions of IT innovators. ‘’Mampesa’’ out of Nairobi; ‘’Heheh’’ in Kigali have shown that women are shoulder-to-shoulder with male inventors. They deserve a season of women receiving his financial support.
Africa’s struggle with the environment has intensified. The march of the Sahara Desert must be overtaken by a programme for ‘greening the Sahara’ to create a new vast frontier for agriculture. Likewise, the Sahara and Kalahari hold vast reservoirs of solar energy to be harvested for firing industrial productivity.  New forms of environmental violence through raging droughts or floods – which wreck roads, bridges, homes, crops and livestock – call for an ‘Environment Violence Tax’ to be charged on major offenders in carbon dioxide emissions, especially the United States and China.
Obama told Ghanaians that strong institutions matter more than inflating egos of dictators. However, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Mandela mattered. Dedan Kimathi, Cabral, Neto and Samora Machel mattered. Obama has mattered to Africa by affirming the value of highly trained intelligence and brilliance at the head of America’s policy safari on the brink of economic and civic moral anarchy. His equivalents in Africa were assassinated or overthrown by military coups funded by Euro-American governments. He should establish one ‘HOT BRAIN University’ for training leaders in every region of the African Union as his reparation.