President Obama Urges young Africans to Revolution

By Innocent Chia

It will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa’s future…it will be you, the men and women in Ghana's Parliament, and the people you represent. Above all, it will be the young people, brimming with talent and energy and hope, who can claim the future that so many in my father's generation never found."

There it is; silent words on paper. From the seat of Ghana’s parliament in Accra on Saturday July 11 2009, Ghanaians, Africans and indeed the world, listened attentively to their author, US President Barack Obama, reverberating a familiar message that the wealthy and well connected don’t want to hear. My postulation is that Obama’s most important message was to the youth of Africa; the message in the highlighted excerpt above.

It is a pregnant message, yet unveiled to the naked eye that is able to from the tantalizing blame game that have besieged cyberspace and traditional media ever since Obama uttered the much awaited speech. I make no bones in the following lines as I tell the intended recipients of Obama’s message that they may be missing the train again if they fail to see that they are the target, the central target or bull’s eye, of his message.

Let us dare to re-read this excerpt from Obama’s speech again: 

“It will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa’s future…it will be you, the men and women in Ghana's Parliament, and the people you represent. Above all, it will be the young people, brimming with talent and energy and hope, who can claim the future that so many in my father's generation never found.” 

Relative to the rest of the text, it is important to note that this excerpt features in paragraph 12 of 48 or so paragraphs. It is therefore in the top ¼ of his message that the first African American president, with a direct and irrefutable lineage to Africa, calls on “young people, brimming with talent and energy and hope... (TO) “CLAIM the future”. 

It is THE only message that young Africans are supposed to have heard, and are supposed to have parted with. “How do we claim this future for us and our progeny?” That is the crucial question that young Africans across the Continent and in the Diasporas are supposed to be obsessing themselves with. 

Armed with that question of “what to do” as young Africans seeking to reclaim our beloved Continent from the hands of rulers, who have forfeited their rights and privileges to be leaders, the serious process of organizing then begins. The question is a precursor to the involvement of willing parties, and the generation and regeneration of resources that is, otherwise, quintessential to the liberation of Africa by Africans for Africans, and with the support and blessing of the rest of world. 

The sapping of brains from Africa is well documented. The cry is not about our older ones that are searching for greener pastures. Africa needs them too; but Africa is outside the stadium while the rest of the world is inside competing for the very talents that are of Africa and from Africa. In every field that is known to man, some African is excelling in another man’s land, rejected like Christ the Corner stone, by his own. 

Now is the time for us young Africans to claim what is ours. It is incomprehensible that the current generation of rulers is unwilling to pass the relay baton. But it is not strange, because they are the sons of their parents who were Kings in villages and Kingdoms. There was no democracy in the sense that we know it in the world today. They were given power – Paul Biya of Cameroon, or seized power – the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, while in their primes. And is your turn, my turn. 

Power will not be given to us. We have to seize it because the ballot box has no power. Today’s election results in Dennis Sassou Nguessou’s banana republic of Congo are yet another testament of the resolve to hold on to power. The dust is yet to settle on the shaming speech that President Obama delivered to the old guard that is bent on taking Africa six feet down with them to their graves. Are you going to let them to get away with it or you will fight back? 

There is little sense chiming the old and used up refrain that the civil society and NGO’s have been crying out loud about for decades: Corruption is killing Africa and will continue killing it. Obama may have shocked the world because it came out so unfiltered from the highest level of power imaginable – the US Presidency. The message was clear – we may receive you at the White House, but we know that you are thieves. 

It is a most belittling statement that I would hate for anyone to make in my father’s regard. But I accept it because my father’s generation, not my father, have let Africa down. To this old guard, Obama says to stop the corruption; to stop the petty theft; to begin loving their grandchildren; to understand that leadership has never been about self – it has always been about serving the least of these. 

Whoever doubts that the direction of the Obama White House for Africa is targeting youth empowerment is to look no further than the recent proclamations of US Ambassador to Cameroon, Janet E. Garvey: 

"...the biggest obstacle to Cameroon’s development, the biggest obstacle that prevents Cameroon from achieving its full potential, is Cameroonians’ lack of ownership for their own nation, their own government, their own communities."

 "I am troubled by the spirit of resignation, almost of despair, that seems to prevail among many of my Cameroonian friends these days." 

One would hardly conceive that the Ambassador is talking about ownership by the oligarchs and remaining dinosaurs. 

This is the time for young Africans to truly reclaim the countries. If anything, President Obama’s speech is a timeless piece to generations of Africans from heretofore. The timeless message is a reminder to be preparing to take over power, always. The question is whether we are preparing ourselves for the eventuality. 

Are we running in our local councils and cities? Are we running to become parliamentarians or Senators? Are we demanding to be heard in the newsrooms and making sense with the microphone? What are you doing to take over? Not tomorrow, but beginning now, let us rally behind a cause or begin one. Support those who have started something and bring meaningful contributions to the table. Be ready to sacrifice your widow’s mite for the greater good. Don’t take Africa and Africans back to the back seat in the bus. 

Our sisters must be on the table too. They who have refused, rightfully, to embrace blindly what chauvinistic roles their fathers and grandfathers defined for their mothers. There is no field where they excel not. And leadership too is equally for their taking. 

All hands must be on deck. Leaders must be identified and supported. If done rightly, there is little doubt in my mind that the West, including the Obama White House, will support those initiatives to topple dictatorial governments from the ballot boxes. Africans, let us do it now. Let us do it now. 

President Obama, a young man and a son of the soil himself, has given the green light today…

"It will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa’s future…it will be you, the men and women in Ghana's Parliament, and the people you represent. Above all, it will be the young people, brimming with talent and energy and hope, who can claim the future that so many in my father's generation never found." 

Comments

[Ras Tuge]

Innocent,
Obama neither said anything that we don't already know as Africans, nor did he incite the youth to any kind of revolution or rebellion. He simply admonished the utterly fraudulent status quo that beggared description, and that has inexplicably been maintained by an egocentric, cruel, mysterious, idiotic, and insane African political elite.

Obama also signalled to the peevish, desperate and lackluster African youth by way of advice, of the urgency for them to embolden themselves and consider exploring every avenue in the search for workable answers now, or they just might have to make the supreme sacrifice later. In this manner they can be able to redirect the course of history in their shamelessly embattled continent.

Hopefully, the speech shall awaken in the youth a spirit of dire activism at different levels of
society, and would arguably spur them into a thorough rearguard action against the malicious plans of the notoriously callous leadership to plunge the continent into the eternal abyss of greed, lawlessness and misery.

Nonetheless, for the speech to be meaningful, the various parliaments, and hence governments shall need a complete overhaul, or be dissolved altogether. This way, the ultimate will of the people, as well as the integrity and glory of the various African nations must be regarded as paramount.

Lastly, i want to reiterate that as Cameroonians, we must not wait for the government and its frivolous policies to wither away before we can embrace unquencheable calls to reshape the destiny of the country. Our shrewdness in the willingness to contribute our various skills, as well as confronting the odds and creating avenues for investment back home shall make a whole lot of difference.

By the same token, we must not wait for Barack Hussein Obama, Janet E. Garvey or any non African goodwill preacher to tell us what we need to do. The African youth must learn to believe in themselves, to prioritize fairness, and to hunger for progressive change in Africa.
Again, as Africans, there's nothing Obama said that we don't already know. However, we thank him for his endeavour.