Kente cloth, Ghana
Across Africa, we have seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny and making change from the bottom up. Make no mistake: history is on the side of these brave Africans and not with those who use coups or change Constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.
President Barack Obama, Accra, Ghana, 11 July 2009 (text)
In Chinua Achebe's 1966 novel A Man of the People, "Chief the Honourable M. A. Nanga, M.P." calls the shots, pulls the strings, does everything for His People that a Big Man is supposed to. All the while helping himself to public money and quashing dissent. As Somali journalist Abdi Guled recently wrote, confronting the "Big Man Syndrome" in Africa is one of the Obama Administration's major challenges on the continent. Today's speech was a good step in that direction.
Many Africans might look at Mr. Obama himself as the biggest of Big Men, as a son of Africa who has made it in the West (understatement), and might now be counted on, in time-honored African fashion, to be the Big Benefactor and send more money back "home." But the President is having none of it:
[T]he true sign of success is not whether we are a source of perpetual aid that helps people scrape by — it is whether we are partners in building the capacity for transformational change. Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it is no longer needed.
Though much anticipated and well-received, the speech appears to be continuation of many programmatic themes of US policy. Obama gave due credit to George W. Bush's initiatives on health care, though it must be said that even in a country as democratic as Ghana, the best health care is available to elites, and is usually found in the Military Hospital, in capital cities across the continent.
That other Bush initiative - the establishment of AFRICOM - was put in proper perspective, just after diplomacy: "our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world." Obama's mention of "foothold" may be seen by Africans as a reference to Bush Administration frustration in its early attempts to get African support to site AFRICOM headquarters on the continent.
The strength of Obama's "Good Governance" speech, as former Ugandan Foreign Minister Olara Ottunnu said on a BBC program, may come from his "moral authority as a son of an African intellectual." His reminding African audiences that poor leadership - not colonialism - is responsible for "the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy," for the use of child soldiers, for tribalism, nepotism, or corruption, is made all the more credible because of who he is.
The Big Man in Africa is a reality, and the realist in Obama knows that he will have to continue to work with African Big Men, in presidential palaces and governor's mansions from Cairo to Katanga. But today's speech mentions Africa's unsung heroes, "these brave Africans" - people from civil society and the civil service who fight injustice and corruption. Obama's singling out of those courageous people and organizations should provide encouragement to young Africans who hang on his every word. And make the Big Men feel slightly less comfortable in their plush palaces.