There is so much to learn, even today, especially today, from this memorable speech by Barack Obama to Africa. Serge Mathias Tomondji strongly believes that current generations should grasp its quintessence in order to claim, through elegance of behavior and action, “the future that so many people from previous generations never realized…”
It was a long-awaited speech that kept all its promises. It was a speech that could not be more solemn, declaimed in front of the Ghanaian parliamentarians. It was a speech in tune with the times, for Africa and for Africans, with a hint of "Yes you can" which has the value of exhortation. It was the speech of Barack Obama, then President of the United States of America, who was making his first official visit to Black Africa.
And I still talk about it today, thirteen years to the day, because that Barack Obama was the son of a Kenyan emigrant who became the first Black to gain access to the House after democratic elections. -White. I also talk about it, above all, because for me, this speech of July 11, 2009 remains very topical and the questioning it conveys most crucial.
We thus learn that young people must trace the furrows of the new Africa of our dreams. Beyond the Ghana where he was, and the Kenya of his fathers, Barack Obama indicated that… “it will not be great personalities such as Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will decide the fate of Africa, (but rather) the young people, brimming with talent, energy and hope, who will be able to claim the future that so many of previous generations never achieved”.
STRONG INSTITUTIONS
In doing so, the Chief Executive of the United States had then placed the African continent in a rich perspective, counting on its enormous youth capital to meet the challenges facing it. Even today, African youth are seriously challenged on their role and missions as a catalyst for a more serene, more united Africa, more on the track of good governance and a democracy that is better understood and beneficial to all.
Undoubtedly, thirteen years ago, in Accra, Barack Obama placed Africa before the mirror of its past, while projecting it into a relevant vision for its future. Because indeed, he had hammered, “Africa does not need strong men, but strong institutions”. A profession of faith that has remained famous until today, proven by the marvelous examples of Kenya and Malawi, where we have seen strong institutions resume presidential elections, which had consecrated men who believed themselves strong.
But it is certain, these examples remain marginal and in the socio-political muddle of coups d'Etat back in certain countries of the continent, one can well wonder if Africa is not forever haunted by the myth of Sisyphus. ! And yet, it must be known, if “every nation shapes democracy in its own way, in accordance with its traditions, governments which respect the will of their people, which govern by consent and not by coercion, are more prosperous, more stable and more flourishing than those that do not. By conveying this truth to his audience, Barack Obama also castigated, on July 11, 2009 in Accra, "those who use coups or who modify the Constitutions to stay in power".
QUINTESSENCE
One truth calling for another, the one whose father "grew up in a very small village where he kept goats, an impossible distance from the American universities where he would go to study" still professed that no country can "create of wealth if its leaders exploit the economy for personal enrichment, or if police officers can be bought off by drug traffickers". Better still, he rightly affirmed, “nobody wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the law of the strongest and to corruption. It is not democracy, it is tyranny, even if from time to time an election is sown here and there, and it is time for this style of government to disappear”.
There is so much to learn, even today, especially today, from this memorable speech by Barack Obama to Africa. Current generations, I strongly believe, should grasp its quintessence in order to claim, through elegance of behavior and action, “the future that so many of previous generations never realized…”
© Serge Mathias Tomondji
Ouagadougou, July 11, 2022
