Source: allafrica.com ( Support Democracy, Africans Urge Obama )
Obama Discusses Africa
President Obama Visits Ghana
Africa: Support Democracy, Africans Urge Obama
From across Africa, messages for President Barack Obama, submitted to allAfrica.com, have appealed for government by the people. “WE NEED DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA,” insisted a 40-year-old businessman, in emphatic capital letters.
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Obamas visit to Africa is a significant historical event. He is half African, president of US and the most powerful man in the world. His achievements in Africa would not be as revolutionary as what he symbolises. He will make history. He has achieved more that any serious man could dream. He is on the top of the world but Africa wouldn’t.
Most Africans are delusional about how the relationship of Africa and Europe is and should be. Africans thinks shell or total or Anglo should voluntarily pay tax on moral ground, Europe should share their wealth with them and Europe should not exploit Africa or have an advantage over it on trade.
Perhaps they have not hard about competitive relationship between business and states and countries over countries. That what business do. They want to pay lower taxes and exploit workers. If one doesn’t understand that one most be delusional and Obama cannot do noting about it. If shell or Anglo comes to Africa and bribe Africans and exploit them who is stupid fool.
Why do you think slavery took place in Africa and not Asia or South America because African sold Africans to Europeans for the price of nothing but sugar. If Africans don’t want Europeans to mine their resources let them do it for them self but you know what they can’t do it. Their leaders don’t have the vision and creativity to do it.
If Africa wants to develop it has to compete and not ask for anything base on social or humanitarian grounds. For example if they want free trade they can set a free trade zone in Africa. Hyper increase tax on European good and make a deal with the likes of china and India to reduce their taxes to make sure food prices don’t rise. With in six months Europe will allow African good in Europe. Africa should be competing not begging or blaming Europe for their problems.
Why is it that every time a country or continent needs help its the AMERICAN govt. that feels the need to intervene and make things worse. VIETNAM, IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN and now AFRICA. American’s went into IRAQ for the oil, Afghanistan for the OPIUM and now Africa for more resources. THE US says “Africa needs militiary assistance” but there are other things that are needed first. Issue’s like better medical care and more ways of financing people’s needs and better infrastructure, helping out small scale businesses, educating the youth, opening more schools and hospitals, end the GENOCIDE in DARFUR. Why is it that there’s so much involvement of United States and not United Nations. The Africom project should be funded the way it is right now but why is it not being initiated by the UN. I strongly feel that US is going in to Africa for their resources and not to help out the people. Again and again time has shown how the American Govt. leaders have fooled the world by saying that they are intervening to help but it turns out “the help is provided to private companies who want the many resources available in the country invaded by US troops in return for money to the US”. AMERICA LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE. WHENEVER YOU TRY TO HELP YOU END UP HURTING MORE. President Obama this one’s for you:- Are you really trying to help make this world a better place for your own nation or for the rest of the world. Another Yes and No Question for the President. Does the AFRICOM project involve US trying to procure any kind of resources from AFRICA or not. And how does that help children suffering from starvation, literacy rate in the African nations and numerous other issues that are alike or fall in the same category of developing and strengthening AFRICA and not AMERICA.
Africa: U.S. Wants to Spotlight ‘Successful Models’ And Be An ‘Effective Partner’ – Obama
Barack Obama makes his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president of the United States next week, following a trip to Russia as well as to Italy, where he will participate in a meeting of industrialized nations known as the G8. AllAfrica’s Charles Cobb, Jr., Reed Kramer and Tami Hultman went to the White House to explore President Obama’s views on Africa in advance of his visit. The interview …
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This post was deleted because it contravenes AllAfrica’s commenting guidelines.
All African-Americans???
All might b well but will Genetically Modified food be an eventual problem for those who cannot afford to buy It?
I think this is another Michael Jackson act; that when MJ became successful – read accepted by the mainstream white community – he run away from his identity and seemed to be embarassed by his black African roots. Likewise Obama seems to be embarrassed by his African roots especially now how he is just going to make an inconvenient stop-over at Accra, Ghana after meeting and commensirating with the more important white European Superpower Russia.
Might as well stay away from Africa. It is a familiar movie: An African-American Embarassed with Non-European African Roots.
You are talking a lot of nonsense. What do you mean he is turning into another MJ? For your information Ghana is one of the very few countries in Africa that has a decent gov’t and elected in a proper democratic way. Where do you want him to go first, like Ethiopia, who has one of the most tyrant prime ministers who is butchering people every day like most of the others. Good on you Barak, please give Ghana all the support it needs.
All Africans should thank Michael Jackson, over his career, he gave hungry, destitiute swollen belly babies over 500 million US dollars to help, more than the actual governments that call themselves in existence. Please you must be one of those dirty ARABS that say stupid things and kill people in the name of your GOD. Get a life
I think it’s grossly unfair for Africans to critisize Obama saying that he is not proud of his African roots. Alot of us Africans have had to run away from Africa because ther is no hope for the future. After we attained independence in Zimbabwe, the Whitwe elite was replaced with a Black elite which is ruthless and busy looting all the wealth and sending away all the money to western counties which they pretend to critisise as imperialists. Ther is no hope for Africa with our current leaders. We can’t even remove them from power using peaceful means. Is that something to be proud of?
yeah right
As a African-American, I am embarrassed by the contintent of Africa. As an American tax payer, My President, should just let you continue to rot and kill each other, and also to continue to let the western countries rape you of your natural resources. No drive, no ambition just AIDS and famine and malaria, a disease that has been damn near extinct for 40 years. How pitiful to think someone is embarrassed, he is! Don’t forget it. Do something for yourselves, stop disrepecting women and putting up with frauds, especially Darfur, Somalia, and the ones we never hear about until they are starving!!!!!!
Your ignorance and blatant attempt to portray yourself as an African American is appalling for you might be black but not an African American, you sound much more like an old bootlicking apologist for you know nothing of your African history, you claim to be embarrassed of Africa because of its lack self dependancy, my friend what of the African American woes with the highest incarceration rates, low university retention rates etc…l;
More than likely your a white posing as a black trying to keep us Africans disunited and disenfranchised. You don’t know the true power of the African, you’ll soon see. And if your a black man you should know better thats why I question your ethnicity.
anothermj-
Just for the record all African Americans do not run or hide or are embarrassed by their African roots, believe it or not many A/A live, work, visit, and have investments on the continent. Do not let the mainstream media dictate that we are all the same, just as all Europeans are not. The differences that divide us should be the strengths that unites us. In other words we should use our different cultures and experiences and turn them into strengths. We need make our people as a whole stronger, more educated and better leaders. We as a people must unite or our future is bleak.
That comment is so unfair and very ignorant..Barack was at the G8 Summit…We have to meet with the nations that have the means to actually attack the USA! Come on! Also, Michael Jackson had VITILIGO…which is a skin disease….It is proven…his dermatologist Arnold Klein admitted it years ago and again last week on Larry King Live!
Dkanela, contrary to what some people project about Michael Jackson, this man was as proud as any black person can be of his race. Yes, as it has already been stated, he DID have LUPUS which not only enhanced his baldness ( hence the wigs he wore ) but also manifesting itself as vertiligo which is a condition in which one’s own immune system slowly attacks and kills the pigmentation of skin, as a black person, leaving one with black and white patches. There is no cure for this disease, and for Michael who was an entertainer constantly in the lime light, it was simply easier for his dermatologist to apply creams and speed up the disease so he does not go about his life looking like a leopard. As a black person he opened so many doors that were closed to the black community, gave millions to black causes and other charitable organizations that he has gone into the Guinness book of records for having given so much single handed.
DEAR PRESIDENT OBAMA: IT’S TIME FOR A REFRESHER COURSE ON AFRICA
Gerald Caplan July 9, 2009.
President Obama is on his way to the small west African country of Ghana, his first official trip to Africa and, for obvious reasons, an historic one. In an interview this week, Obama, with no false humility, stated that “I’m probably as knowledgeable about African history as anybody who’s occupied my office”. No question. Still, the bar in that particular competition was not exactly set very high. And as the interview demonstrated, he’s not nearly as knowledgeable as he thinks he is. Much of what he believes about Africa and how it can meet its many challenges is simply wrong.
In his interview with allAfrica.com, the President emphasized internal African causes for the continent’s woes, highlighting especially the need for good governance and ending corruption. So he argues, for example, that “you’re not going to get investment without good governance”. That’s simply wrong. For decades most foreign investment in Africa has gone to South Africa first, even under apartheid, and then to such oil-rich nations as Angola and Nigeria. In all cases, good governance played no role in investment decisions. Making an assured profit, regardless of the governance system, was the only criterion.
Similarly, Obama insisted that business won’t invest where “government officials are asking for 10, 15, 25 percent off the top”. That’s an illogical assertion. If foreign business- men weren’t only too eager to play the bribery game, those officials couldn’t get away with demanding a cut off the top. Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon, Congo—everyone knows how to get a contract in these and other countries. Which also should remind us that high-level corruption in Africa couldn’t and doesn’t happen without western collaboration.
Obama says there is “a direct correlation between governance and prosperity”. That’s why he chose democratic Ghana for his first official state visit, rather than his father’s country, Kenya. Heaven knows that the ruling parties in Kenya are brazenly corrupt and dedicated to little beyond enriching themselves and their supporters. Ghana, on the other hand, after years of bad governments following the CIA-backed coup that overthrew its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, can now be said to be fairly stable and democratic. Obama knows lots of interesting things. When his father left Kenya in the early 1960s to study in the USA, he noted, the GDP of Kenya was higher than that of South Korea; today, Korea is one of the world’s great economic success stories, while Kenya languishes.
The UN’s Human Development Index backs this up. In 2008, of 179 countries listed, Korea was ranked an impressive 25th while Kenya was 144th. But the President should look at these ratings more closely. Despite good governance, and though some real progress is being made, Ghana was ranked 142nd, virtually tied with Kenya among the bottom 20% of the world’s nations. Something else must be going on here that accounts for this situation because Obama’s analysis can’t.
Here’s the heart of his diagnosis,: While the international community “has not always been as strategic as it should have been [regarding Africa]…ultimately I’m a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa…for many years we’ve made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neocolonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racist. I’m not a believer in excuses.”
Well, this is partially true. Africans have for decades been betrayed by a veritable pageant of monstrous leaders. But another truth is that the United States actively backed almost all of them, and if the US didn’t, France did; that’s part of neocolonialism. The west also supplied many of the arms that were used in the appalling internal conflicts that have roiled Africa for so long. Even today, the US, Britain and France continue to remain close to many African leaders whose democratic credentials leave much to be desired.
The reality, rarely grasped, is that year after year far more of Africa’s wealth and resources pour out of the continent to the rich world than the west provides Africa through all sources, from aid to investment to trade.
Beyond that, even if every African country was led by a saint, they could do nothing about the severe environmental and economic damage that global warming—for which Africa has no responsibility whatever—is inflicting across the continent.
Even the most exemplary African leaders could do nothing about the destructive impact on African development of the present world-wide economic crisis, for which Africa has no responsibility whatever.
No African leader has the slightest influence on the drastic increase in food prices that is causing such suffering, including outright starvation, to millions of Africans.
Even a continent of Mandelas couldn’t change the massive subsidies that western governments provide to their agribusinesses. When they’re in Ghana, the Obamas should do some comparison shopping. They may be taken aback to find that it costs more to buy a locally-bred chicken than a subsidized one that’s been shipped frozen all the way from Europe.
And nothing can be done about the enormous damage already done to Africa by the destructive neoliberal policies that were imposed on African governments by the World Bank and IMF over the past 30 years. Even today, while their rhetoric has changed, these institutions, deeply American-influenced, continue to insist on discredited policies that have failed to promote growth while vastly increasing inequality.
I documented this case in a book published last year, The Betrayal of Africa. It demonstrates the twin burdens that actually account for Africa’s condition–their own wretched leaders combined with destructive western policies and practices. I know the President is a pretty busy guy, but it’s a short book and he clearly enjoys reading and learning. Unless he learns what’s really going on in Africa, his administration will become yet another in an endless line that has caused Africa more grief than good.
Rubbish…Simply because aid was given to dubiuos people before does not mean that should always be the case. Countries like Zimbabwe for instance should forget any help until Mugabe and his cronies go….Selfishj thieves…Ruthless murderers…
fridaytalk and foko
Press Center in Diego prepares new media
Press Center in Diego ready to learn new media
Pascal Rakotoarisoa, the AMA President and the initiator of the Press Center in Antsiranana met A.P.C member, at the same time foko member, Stephan at A.P.C Tana by the end of May. They talked about the connection problem at Press center in Antsiranana which was initiated by the association AMA and funded by U.S Embassy. “This would really helped us”, said Pascal, after being introduced to Stephan.
As both of them are members of A.P.C and at the same time Friday talk club, Stephan, as a blogger, could share his experience on how to use new media. But before this sharing take place, a connection would be established. Thanks to the art of negociation, Foko decided to help the association to set it up…which is an opportunity for journalists to enjoy using the new media…
Tags: SONDAGE FOKO
L’association http://foko-madagascar.org est une association apolitique qui a pour but de promouvoir “ le journalisme citoyen “ par la vulgarisation des “nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication” ou nTIC via le Foko Blog Club ( FBC ).
L’utilisation de la plateforme http://wordpress.com comme outil de travail et les differents liens qui y sont affectes tels que http://twitter.com, http://flickr.com ou enore http://youtube.com sont une des meilleurs facons de vulgariser le developpement d’expression d’un citoyen lambda.
Tous ces liens sont gratuits pour ceux ou celles qui veulent s’exprimer virtuellement et librement sans pour autant porter atteinte a autrui.
Depuis sa creation, nos bloggers ont connu un succes tant sur le plan national qu’international en fournissant des nouvelles en temps reel mais surtout sur differents themes concernant les droits humain, l’environnement, la sante, l’architecture, la promotion feminine, le culturel, la politique et beauoup d’autres.
Une collaboration etroite avec le http://rising.globalvoices.org et des specialistes en nTIC international pour la mise en place d’un blog contre les rumeurs a vu le jour avec la plateforme http://foko.ushahidi.com , cette derniere consiste a utiliser son telephone portable pour les sms comme outil de partage de donnees et de nouvelles.
Ceci etant, les activites de foko-madagascar ne se limite pas au simple fait du virtuel mais pour une education citoyenne pour tous. Tout recemment avec nos bases dans les 9 regions de Madagascar un sondage sur la promotion de la jeunesse et leur contribution pour le developpement du pays.
Le but de ce sondage est de faire connaitre la realite du jeune malgache dans sa vie quotidienne. Avant que toute deduction se fasse nous aimerions vous faire savoir que cette decision est vraiment dependante de notre association et qu’aucune connotation ni couleur politique est derriere http://foko-madagascar.org .
Les http://cnn.com, BBC, France24, IRIN ainsi que plusieurs entites journalistiques etrangeres ont prit connaissance du vrai travail offert par les bloggers et membres de http://foko-madagascar.org durant les differents evenements qui se sont succedes depuis 2007, en somme une reconnaissance de foko-madagascar qui de plus se vulgarise petit a petit par le biais du journalisme citoyen mais le plus extraordinaire est la collaboration etroite avec ” les media traditionnels “
Pour en finir avec cette histoire virtuel de foko, nous aimerions invites tous citoyens qu’ils soient etudiants, cadres de societes, fonctionnaires, entrepreneurs… a venir participer et s’acquerir des bases du journalisme citoyen a partir d’un blog durant les ateliers offerts gratuitement par http://foko-madagascar.org
Toute l’equipe entiere de http://foko-madagascar.org ainsi que les coordonnateurs de chaque region vous remercie.
Evariste Anselme Ramanantsoavina.Retour à l’ordre constitutionnel!
Du cote des légalistes le retour a l’ordre constitutionnel est primordial mais surtout important pour le développement du pays mais aussi on peut traduire que c’est un grand pas pour toutes les personnes qui ne sont pas d’accord avec ce premier jeune président non élu démocratiquement au monde.
Pour ma part je n’ai jamais émis d’opinion mais aujourd’hui je pense que le mieux pour nous malgaches est de faire sortir le pays le plus vite possible de cette impasse que les hommes politiques sont en train de nous faire subir. Non seulement avec leurs fiertés mal places et leurs égocentrismes, ils sont sur le point de mettre Madagascar sur la plus haute marche de la nullité mais aussi de nous inscrire dans le livre des guiness record pour stupidités.
Si aujourd’hui je dis que je suis pour la legalite et pour le retour a un ordre constitutionnel, cela ne veut pas dire que je suis pour la politique de Ravalomanana et du TIM, mais contre le coup d’etat. Au depart j’etais persuade qu’avec sa soif de democratie, Andry TGV allait porter haut le porte fanion de la jeunesse malgache mais la, a prendre le pouvoir par les armes et se faire introniser, quand meme il y a de quoi a se poser des questions et se demander si c’est un bon exemple pour la generation future.
March 20, 2009
Mpanagalatra tetsy Ambohijatovo!
Izany rehefa tia angalatra eo e!
Midina @ Colbert akeo @ HCC!
Raharinaivo isan’ny mpitarika tonga voalohany teo alohany Tribunal niresaka t@ mpikirakira ny va.
Violence flares at Madagascar Palace!
(CNN) — Members of Madagascar’s military battled supporters of President Marc Ravalomanana outside the presidential palace Monday as the turmoil over whether he stays in office intensified.
Madagascan soldiers loyal to opposition leader Andry Rajoelina outside the presidential palace Monday.
An eyewitness who blogs from Madagascar, Stefan Armananarivo, told CNN he saw two tanks outside the presidential palace in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, and saw the military shoot at people in the crowd protecting the building.
News reports from the scene gave similar descriptions and said the self-declared leader of the armed forces had announced his support for the opposition.
Some supporters of the president lined up to try to block the military from taking over the palace.
It was not immediately clear whether the military had taken over the palace. Reports said the embattled Ravalomanana was in a different palace at the time.
At the U.S. embassy in Antananarivo, the head of security announced that explosions and gunshots had been heard at the palace, according to an embassy employee who asked not to be named for security reasons.
The violence came as the African Union held an emergency meeting to discuss the power struggle gripping Madagascar. The AU said all members of its Peace and Security group would attend the meeting.
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Ravalomanana pledged Sunday that he would remain in office despite fierce opposition, and urged the country’s military not to intervene.
“I am aware of the feelings of anxiety that you feel in the face of intentions to seize power by force,” Ravalomanana told a crowd gathered at the president’s palace Sunday in Lavoloha, according to a statement issued by his office. He pledged to “remain faithful to the people and never leave her alone.”
An official with his office told CNN that the president said he would organize a referendum if that would help solve the crisis.
The statement from Ravalomanana’s office quoted him as saying, “If we have to go through a referendum, I have nothing to fear even if this occurs.”
The president’s government has been at odds with opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, who recently was ousted from his position as mayor of Antananarivo. Rajoelina has called on Ravalomanana to quit.
Poverty has been a major issue in Madagascar, boosting Rajoelina’s appeal to a segment of the population angered by the behavior of Ravalomanana, including his recent purchase of a private jet.
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CNN’s Erin Levin contributed to this report.
All About Madagascar
