Today is US president Barack Obama’s last day in office and
Donald Trump’s first.
Just as Obama’s ascendance to the leadership of the free
world was surprising and historical, Trump too has upset the conventional
wisdom in US politics.
But unlike Obama’s entry into the White House, which was
accompanied by a hopeful feeling not only in the US but around the world, many
people are looking forward to the Trump administration with apprehension and
foreboding.
My sense is that Trump’s exuberance will be tempered by the sheer
weight of the US bureaucracy.
But one can be sure that the character of his
administration will be coloured by his personality.
We will leave that to the crystal ball watchers.
Obama’s presidency we can look over with the benefit of
hindsight.
"In 2008 when Obama won the race for the presidency it came after two terms of Republican George W. Bush’s administration, during which the US went to war, laying waste to Iraq and Afghanistan. As if that was not enough he bequeathed Obama an economy in the worst state it had been since before the Second World War...
So Obama was starting on very poor footing, which was not a
bad thing – if the optimists were to believed, because there was nowhere to go
but up.
In his eight years at the helm Obama has created – but not
necessarily replaced, millions of jobs, a signal that the economy is beginning
to pull out of its hole, managed to widen the net of medical insurance and
restored some decorum to the oval office.
The negatives are more about things he promised to do but
failed to deliver on like, shut down Guantanamo Bay, pull out of Iraq and
generally make the world a better place to live in. Then there was the widening
use of drones to carry out extrajudicial killings of terrorist suspects.
But as is our wont as Africans we expected Obama, whose
father is Kenyan no less, to be more proactive in helping lift the continent out
of its morass.
He made several visits to the continent, including an
emotional return to Kenya, he pledged $20b towards the development of energy
infrastructure on the continent, made his feelings known about the continent’sdemocratic progress – or lack of thereof and the general intolerance for
alternative lifestyles.
Looking back on the Obama years, his work on Africa will be
much closer the bottom than the top of his list of achievements.
But what did we expect?
The political elite probably hoped he wouldn’t poke his nose
too much in their business, which he did not and the general masses were
probably hoping for an uptick in aid, which did not happen.
But if we were to step back a bit we would see that this continent
is a hard one to help.
Anybody looking to make a dent in the continent’s
intractable dilemmas of poverty, illness and conflict would be best advised not
to hope for quick results.
A genuine helper would want to insert themselves in existing
systems or institutions and hope local momentum would do the rest. We all know
how difficult this is not least because of the lack of institutional depth on
the continent.
They say God helps those who help themselves, I imagine the
same would apply to the US.
But we also forgot or chose to ignore, the fact that Obama
was first and foremost the president of the US, sworn to protect and promote
its interests.
"So was the Obama presidency a lost opportunity for Africa? No. It nailed the point home that no one – even a black president of the greatest economy in the world, is going to help us unless we help ourselves first...
