Asserts the Ugandan libertarian journalist, about the impact of U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election on African politics: "Being 'black' and of African origins, he
enjoys near-unanimous support on our continent. Local elites, frustrated
at their inability to influence their destiny, have been waiting for a
messiah from the West, especially America, to do for them by diktat what
they need to do through political struggle i.e. dictate the pace and
direction of change. Now these local intellectual elites have someone
with the necessary legitimacy, born almost entirely of his assumed
racial identity, to do this work."
Mr. Mwenda argues that the best thing that the liberal Democratic president can do for Africa is to do nothing: "Armed with
an ideology that believes in the use of government power to promote
social change, combined with his personal sense of destiny to change the
world, Obama is the kind of man to attempt a large-scale experiment of
social engineering in Africa. He loves to preach, to lecture and to
guide. His messianic image of himself as the solver of every problem
using government presents our nations a very big challenge. I admit that
a lot of Obama’s ambitions in Africa are shared by a large cross
section of our intellectuals. They would need a Gestapo to implement
them. Here is my
point: our problems are largely (certainly not entirely) domestically
generated, as are the demands to solve them. Often the problem has been
that in trying to shape solutions to them, we rely too much on imported
theories. The mismatch between suggested solutions and actual realities
on the ground has been a major cause of failure on our continent."
Andrew Mwenda: "Obama Is Not The Solution For Africa. Only Africans Can Save Ourselves"
