06 August 2009
Africa’s Best Days Are Ahead, Clinton Says
Nairobi, Kenya — “I am just absolutely convinced Africa’s best days can be ahead,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told students at an interactive town hall meeting at the University of Nairobi on the first country stop of her seven-nation Africa visit.
In an August 6 town hall meeting with students and faculty, Clinton said that for Africa to enjoy those future best days, the use of its natural resources and its revenue streams must change so revenues belong to the people and to governments that are fully transparent and accountable to their citizens.
Clinton appeared in the same university hall in which President Obama spoke in 2006 as a U.S. senator, before he was elected president. Clinton asked the crowd how many people saw then-Senator Obama deliver his speech and about a third of those in the auditorium raised their hands.
Clinton began by reading the last paragraph of Obama’s 2006 speech, which asked Kenyans to face the reform process with courage and pledged continued support to Kenya’s people.
Clinton said she was delivering a personal message from Obama to the country’s leadership and to the Kenyan people: that the president “cares deeply” about Kenya. She went on to say that implementing the reform agenda is “imperative” to Kenya’s future.
At the time of Kenya’s independence in the 1960s, she said, people bet on Kenya and wrote off countries like South Korea, betting that Kenya had the infrastructure and the education, and its people had a sense of the future.
Now, she said, echoing President Obama’s recent remarks in Ghana, “the fact is that Kenya has not fulfilled its economic promise. … I believe, in part, because the country has not yet realized fully what it means to have a functioning, dynamic democracy, and a free press and an independent judiciary.”
Kenyans work hard and Kenya’s private sector is very dynamic, she said, but “the government has to reform itself if Kenya will be all it can be.
“That is the message that President Obama and I have delivered. It is tough, but lovingly presented,” she said, because the United States wants Kenya to be an international leader.
To illustrate a point about corruption in Kenya, she said someone told her, “If you have a problem in Kenya, why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?”
“So, yes, we want to see a reform agenda — because we know that it is not just the violence of the past election but a continuation of decisions that are not in the best interests of the people of Kenya.”
She said the Kenyan leaders with whom she met told her the constitutional reforms will go forward, and that police and judicial reform will go forward as well. “Of course, the big question,” she added, “is how to end corruption and impunity in public service.”
She said she has urged that the problems in Kenya be solved by Kenyans themselves, but added that if they are not, then bodies such as the International Court of Justice may move to take action.
Clinton said confronting corruption and other factors head-on is tough, but a “rite of passage” for democracies and much better handled by the citizens of the country in an open and transparent manner than by some international body.
Asked if the United States would consider withholding aid to Kenya, Clinton said, “That would not be our choice because a lot of our aid goes directly to nongovernmental organizations.”
“We do not want to deprive the people, like I saw yesterday at an agricultural research institute that trains women farmers, who do 70 percent of the work. … We are not considering that, but we are considering steps that would target individuals about which there is overwhelming evidence and belief that they have contributed to and participated in corruption at a massive level … postelection violence and extrajudicial killings.”
She raised another idea, however: that there is an opportunity for young people in civil society “to use modern technology” to run anti-corruption watches.
Such efforts are now taking place in certain parts of the world, she said. “I think there ought to be a way to use this interactive media … to report in real time allegations of corruption.”
Clinton cited small-scale businesswomen in Kenya who do beauty work or sell gasoline as an example of good, hardworking people who are forced to pay much of their income as “protection” bribes.
Kenyan Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who was in the audience, asked what the United States can do to encourage other countries worldwide to deal with Africa honestly and in a nonexploitative manner.
“Africa, historically, has been exploited during colonialism and post-colonialism by corporations, by your own leaders, so that the fruits of this richness that exists in the earth and waters of Africa have not gone to the people, and it is one of the biggest concerns that I have,” Clinton responded.
“There is so much money being made right now, and it is not any one country, it is not any one corporation, but it is unfortunately aided and abetted by poor governance that does not realize that the money can go back to the people in a very tangible way — to build the economy, to build the infrastructure, to create sustainable employment. … Extractive industries do not leave sustainable economies and environments unless there are rules that are enforced.”
Clinton cited Botswana as a good model country that developed well after its independence, discovering diamonds just after the British granted the country its independence.
She said insightful leaders there made the decision to set up a mechanism to funnel diamond revenues into public accounts to aid the public, and that is why “they have a very good network of roads … potable water everywhere. They invested in their people.”
That, she said, should be contrasted with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — one of the country stops on her trip — where she will “speak out against the unspeakable violence against women and girls in eastern Congo. It is the worst example of man’s inhumanity to women.”
She said conflict is going on there because there are many minerals being mined and much money being made, but that money is not benefiting the people of the DRC.
Citing another example, she said Nigeria is now importing petroleum, although it is the world’s fifth-largest petroleum producer. “That is bad governance,” she said.
At the end of her interactive session, which will be broadcast on CNN and the Kenyan Television Network, Clinton offered to take more questions via an Internet site that would be set up by the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
Besides visiting Kenya, Clinton will also travel to South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.
