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Subject: [unioNews] Recommended: "Africa's new class of power players"


> _________________________________________________________________________
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> Headline:  Africa's new class of power players
> Byline:  Danna Harman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
> Date: 09/30/2003
>
> Every year Africa's best and brightest leave their cities and villages
> for Harvard or McGill University or the London School of Economics.
> Some are children of privilege. Some are hand-picked by private
> foundations or donor nations, casting their nets for the next
> generation of African leaders. Others are sent by parents who have
> sacrificed for years to send their offspring abroad.
>
> Far from home, they sit through ethics classes, study theories of
> democracy, pore over law books, use state-of-the-art medical equipment,
> and talk about coming home and making a difference.
>
> Yet on the planet's poorest and most war-torn continent, there remains
> a leadership deficit. Why?
>
> The Monitor spoke with more than a dozen of Africa's promising young
> leaders who studied in the West - from the head of Botswana's
> revolutionary AIDS program to the founder of Africa's biggest Internet
> company to a possible future president of Kenya - about their choice to
> return home. We asked them about giving up a life of comfort for a life
> of contribution, what obstacles they face, and what they are doing to
> break the continent's cycle of dysfunction.
>
> A graceful concession
>
> Early on Christmas morning 2002, Uhuru Kenyatta, his cheery necktie and
> plastered-on smile failing to make him look any less exhausted, stood
> sweating under the lights in Nairobi's Serena Hotel ballroom, slowly
> reading out the most important speech of his young life.
>
> "These elections were a glowing tribute to the great nation of Kenya
> and freedom of choice," he began. "I accept the choice of the people
> and now concede that Mwai Kibaki will be the third president of the
> Republic of Kenya." There was a desire for change afoot, he continued,
> "but we were not perceived by the people as the change they were
> looking for."
>
> Not a particularly notable address by Western standards, but
> practically revolutionary for Africa. The atmosphere in Nairobi that
> morning was drum-taut with tension. Riot police slapped their batons in
> anticipation. Newspaper editors had canceled their correspondents'
> vacations, expecting anger and violent ethnic clashes - that's what had
> happened after every other election in the country's history.
>
> But Mr. Kenyatta's grace in defeat caught everyone by surprise and
> helped defuse the situation. The moment was more than just Kenya's
> first peaceful end to an election cycle. It marked a new maturity in
> African leadership.
>
> The lanky Kenyatta is the son of Kenya's first president, Jomo
> Kenyatta, one of Africa's "big men" - those who wrested power from
> European overlords. The elder Kenyatta was part of what was supposed to
> be a new day for the continent - Africa run by Africans.
>
> Yet no sooner had the Europeans left than new overlords took control,
> this time with African names: Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Idi Amin in
> Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo, to name a few. For the next four
> decades, Africa was pockmarked by war, corruption, coups, and
> countercoups. The continent became a front line in the cold war, with
> the world's superpowers propping up some of the most despicable men.
> These big men often confused their own interests with those of the
> countries they ruled over, handing out favors and hoarding their
> nation's wealth in offshore bank accounts. The new day had faded to
> dusk.
>
> In the 1990s, hopes hung on the next generation of leaders - men like
> Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, and Ethiopia's Meles
> Zenawi. They were, again, supposed to usher in a new era of African
> democracy. And while surveys show more political freedom in Africa now
> than when the decade began, that change often isn't felt on the ground.
> Mr. Kagame, for example, won reelection in Rwanda last month with 95
> percent of the vote in a poll many saw as less than free and fair.
> Recent elections in Uganda and Ethiopia have gone the same way.
>
> Now Africa watchers are forced to look to yet another generation. While
> some are pessimistic, others see another dawn approaching in young
> African leaders like Kenyatta. His self- effacing concession
> represented a transition of sorts - from those who did anything to gain
> power to those who want to embrace democracy, sound business practices,
> and the rule of law.
>
> "We might not be seeing dramatic and sweeping change yet, but there are
> a number of people rising up who are able to see what the right thing
> to do is - and who want to try that," says Ted Dagne, an
> Eritrean-American specialist at the United States Congressional
> Research Service in Washington. "Systemic problems loom large, and it's
> going to take time for the new, independent African-born leaders to
> change this, but there are some good signs."
>
> Sticking to his guns
>
> Ayisi Makatiani is often mentioned as one of young Africa's
> up-and-comers. But it's taken him the better part of a decade to gain
> that recognition. It was back when he was still studying for his degree
> by the placid Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., a decade ago that Mr.
> Makatiani first came up with the idea of starting an Internet business:
> an online chat room that would link Kenyans living in the US who missed
> home and wanted to keep in touch.
>
> It didn't take long for Makatiani, an electrical-engineering student at
> the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Kenyan friends to
> learn that they were on to something. A fast-growing subscription base
> and demands for hard news from home led them to a more ambitious goal:
> an Africa-based Internet service provider, complete with African
> content.
>
> Most people back home still did not have electricity, true, but those
> were the early days of the dotcom craze. With the sense that anything
> could happen, they gave it a go. They knew navigating the waters of
> Kenyan corruption would be daunting, but they weren't prepared for the
> class 5 rapids they encountered.
>
> Shortly after the opening of the Africa Online offices in downtown
> Nairobi, Makatiani's competitors, who had ties to high-level government
> officials, "convinced" the national telephone company to shut down his
> company's phone lines - leaving the main server unable to dial out.
> Customers began canceling subscriptions. "We were offering dialup
> service, and we had no dial tones," he recalls. "It was not fair. Not
> easy."
>
> But today, Kenya's first commercial Internet service provider is
> operating in 10 countries and is considered one of the continent's
> best-run businesses. Makatiani has been named one of the World Economic
> Forum's leaders of tomorrow and recently started a promising new
> venture capital firm - Gallium Capital Partners - to fund tech
> companies in the region. Gallium has already been flagged by Fortune
> magazine as a model fund for companies in Africa.
>
> Africa needs the kind of economic boost Makatiani's venture-capital
> fund can provide. Sub- Saharan Africa now is poorer, sicker, and more
> devastated by war than it was when the colonialists departed. At the
> start of the 21st century, it has the largest concentration of people
> in the world living on less than $1 a day, the greatest number of civil
> wars ongoing, and the highest number of refugees. AIDS has cut life
> expectancy to 47 years, and only 12 percent of the roads are paved.
> Corruption still abounds.
>
> But Makatiani always knew two things, he says, as he maneuvers his car
> along the highways of his current hometown, Johannesburg, South Africa,
> between meetings: He was going to become a major business player in
> Africa, and he was going to do it the fair, ethical way.
>
> "That was a time where you simply could not do business without having
> to pay someone," says Makatiani, a handsome one-time track-and-field
> champion who today favors dapper suits and conservative ties. "But we
> didn't want to pay someone. We didn't want to join that club. It was
> like being part of the mafia."
>
> But he also knew that he could not yell and scream and demand things in
> Nairobi that were par for the course in Cambridge - like getting a
> working phone line if he paid his bills. With the help of a colleague's
> influential father, Makatiani created a politically well-connected
> board of directors that began lobbying on Africa Online's behalf,
> protecting it from unfair demands and steering it toward helpful
> partners.
>
> "What we had to do was educate [government bureaucrats and suppliers].
> There are a lot of people around who have power but who are poor -
> trying to get a piece of the action. But we refused to cut corners," he
> says. If his group had started handing out bribes, he says, they would
> never have seen the end of it.
>
> "Perhaps we were a little bit naive in those early days at Africa
> Online," he chuckles. "We wanted to stick to our guns. We might have
> been richer quicker, but I am not in the business of short-term
> advantages. And I have always been able to sleep at night."
>
> "It will be men and women like Makatiani who will create the wealth
> that pulls Africa into the developed world," Red Herring, the respected
> technology magazine, wrote last year. "His company is treading where
> diplomacy has failed, confronting problems that have thwarted powerful
> international agencies, and slowly progressing toward its goal of
> creating a single market out of Africa's 800 million people."
>
> Who knows division like Rwandans?
>
> For every African who goes abroad and returns with professional
> expertise and grand visions, there are many more who don't come back.
> According to the International Organization for Migration and the
> United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, brain drain has been
> steadily increasing. Between 1960 and 1975 an estimated 27,000 highly
> qualified African professionals left their home countries. Between 1985
> and 1990, the number was up to 60,000 - and Africa has been losing an
> average of 20,000 annually ever since. These figures do not include the
> sizable number of students who leave to study overseas - and haven't
> yet decided whether they will ever return.
>
> If they do, many can be quickly defeated. Corruption bankrupts some.
> Others are knocked down by poverty, entrenched traditions, AIDS, or
> tribal warfare.
>
> In 1994, Chris Kayomba was a refugee in Uganda, halfheartedly studying
> journalism, watching dead bodies flow into Lake Victoria, and dreaming
> of the day he would go home to Rwanda and make a fresh start.
>
> More than 50 of Mr. Kayomba's relatives - brothers, sisters, aunts,
> cousins - were killed during the 100 days of genocide in Rwanda. In
> all, 800,000 people died in the ethnic cleansing.
>
> When the genocide finally ended, Kayomba took a taxi back home to
> Kigali and, just shy of age 30, got together with some friends to try
> to do something about repairing the country. They started Umuseso,
> Rwanda's first daily opposition paper. Umuseso, derived from the
> Kinyarwanda word for "daybreak," was going to be something fresh, they
> told themselves. In a land scarred by Tutsi and Hutu tribal hatred,
> their paper was going to offer straight talk about ethnicity and
> government - "and Manchester United," adds McDowell Kalisa, a senior
> editor who also moonlights as the British soccer team's Rwanda fan-club
> director.
>
> The paper would heal, challenge, bring up new ideas. That's what they
> thought. But in Africa, good intentions sometimes can take one only so
> far.
>
> The team became discouraged. As government harassment grew, one fled to
> the Netherlands, two were jailed, and others left the country. Kayomba
> clung to his ideals, getting a scholarship for a master's degree in
> peace and conflict studies at the University of Londonderry in Northern
> Ireland. Ireland was something else, he recalls. At first he was not
> sure they were even speaking English - and he's sure many of them had
> never ever seen a Rwandan. But soon he began to love it, and made
> friends with everyone - Catholics and Protestants alike. He even became
> a go-between for them.
>
> "Think about it," he says with a grin. "Who has better experience in
> evils of division than Rwandans? I know what that's like." In class
> they studied Israel and the disputed Asian territory of Kashmir, and in
> the evenings they held debates on different ways of resolving ethnic
> and religious strife.
>
> When Kayomba came back from Ireland, he had big plans: He would write
> powerful commentaries in Umuseso about postwar reconciliation between
> tribes; he would advocate for overcoming the lingering animosities in
> the country without limiting freedoms; he would organize lectures on
> how other postconflict societies have dealt with their pasts; and maybe
> he would even run for office.
>
> So far, he has done none of this. He needed to make money first, he
> admits. He grew tired of the infighting at the paper, the bureaucracy
> in and around the government, the prohibition of any real talk about
> ethnicity, and the mild but persistent harassment of anyone saying
> anything controversial at all. So he went to teach journalism at the
> University of Butare and do research on democracy for a Dutch
> nongovernmental organization (NGO).
>
> He's married now, and makes four times as much money work- ing for the
> NGO than he would working at his old newspaper. Sometimes he even
> writes a column for the government paper.
>
> "There is no real independent media here," he says, defending his
> choice. "No one really addresses the issues anyway."
>
> Umuseso is still around, though these days its just Mr. Kalisa and his
> friend Robert Sebufirira, writing the stories, doing the editing,
> delivering the newspaper in a van. The focus has changed, too. There
> are more sports pages and far less talk about ethnicity. It's
> prohibited by the government - an extreme measure taken, they say, to
> prevent a repeat of the horrors that were born out of the combination
> of free speech and simmering ethnic tension that led, in part, to the
> genocide. In private, critics argue that the newly reelected President
> Kagame is using these laws to stifle freedoms and actually stirring
> ethnic divisions by shoving them under the carpet.
>
> Kayomba's colleagues at Umuseso can understand his choices. "Rwanda is
> a poor country," says Mr. Sebufirira, "and it's hard to remain
> courageous when you need to make ends meet.... Don't be surprised if
> you meet someone with good ideas and you come back five years later and
> they are speaking the opposite."
>
> "If you study or move out, you get new ideas - you are not confined in
> a certain cycle and as a result, you look at things so differently,"
> explains Kalisa. "The problem is that you find you can't implement
> those good ideas back home.... Kayomba got so many good ideas [in
> Ireland]. But when he wanted to exercise them, he found this was not
> good ground to work on."
>
> To serve the nation, not just the tribe
>
> Kenyans haven't faced genocide like their neighbors, but tribalism is
> no less of a divisive force. Kenyatta's speech last Christmas - and the
> way he campaigned - was noteworthy for its relative lack of tribalism.
>
> In Africa, the man with the tribe behind him is expected to take care
> of his people at the expense of everyone else. National pride or unity
> is not a concept that comes easily to a continent where colonialists
> unceremoniously split up rivers, mountains, tribes, and families as
> they divvied up the land among themselves. Tribalism has been the order
> of the day ever since. Everything, it seems, takes a backseat to
> ethnicity. Take Kenya's exalted long-distance runners. When a Kenyan
> wins the New York marathon, the media in Nairobi hail it as a Kalenjin
> or a Luhya victory - not a win for Kenya.
>
> Kenyatta's father, as president, gave members of the Kikyuyu tribe -
> Kenya's largest and most influential - a disproportionate share of
> political and economic power. Afterward, President Daniel arap Moi
> exploited distrust of the Kikyuyus for his own ends and handed out
> favors to his tribesmen, the Kalenjin, as well as to other supportive
> ethnic groups.
>
> But in last year's elections, both Kenyatta and current President
> Kibaki - also a Kikyuyu - campaigned on platforms to stop this cycle.
> The peaceful elections, with voting patterns less ethnically based than
> before, may be an example of an emerging national spirit that weaken
> old ethnic cleavages.
>
> "We are not fighting for liberation anymore," says Kenyatta. "Now it's
> time to rediscover what sort of leadership we want. We need to design
> and build systems and create institutions that will serve - not just
> individuals or this generation - but posterity. America has done this,
> and this is why it is still standing firm after 200 years."
>
> Fighting 'brain drain'
>
> America was home for Ernest Darkoh. He had a nice apartment in the New
> York borough of Brooklyn, he was making good money, his social life was
> thriving, and his first nephew had just been born.
>
> But something was gnawing at him.
>
> "I could see my life stretching ahead of me in the States," says the
> 33-year-old American-born son of Ghanaian parents. "I would be ... just
> another professional."
>
> It's the end of a long day at work in his stuffy office in Gabarone,
> Botswana's tiny capital city, and he sways slightly on a swivel chair.
> "What I wanted to do was follow my heart," he says. "Go somewhere where
> my input was really needed."
>
> More than 15 million people have died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa,
> and to date, 11 million have been orphaned. In Botswana, 38 percent of
> adults are HIV-positive and life expectancy has plummeted to below 40
> from over 65. By 2010, it could sink to 29, predicts the United Nations
> Program on HIV/AIDS - a level not seen in developed nations since the
> Middle Ages.
>
> Outside input here is needed, and Darkoh - with a medical degree and a
> master's in public health from Harvard, an MBA from Oxford, and a
> several years' experience working at McKinsey Company in New York -
> wanted to give it.
>
> One of his projects at the consulting firm was a study, the first of
> its kind, of the feasibility of launching HIV/AIDS antiretroviral
> therapy in Botswana. Soon after, he was recruited by Botswana's
> government to head its AIDS-drug rollout efforts. It is a
> groundbreaking project into which private US companies and foundations
> have poured millions.
>
> The program distributes the drugs free of charge to anyone who needs
> them. It is generally regarded as the developing world's most
> comprehensive assault on AIDS and a model for fighting the epidemic
> elsewhere.
>
> Even so, Darkoh hesitated before accepting. "I had certain criteria in
> my head that needed to be fulfilled," he says. "I wanted to make sure I
> knew what I was heading into."
>
> He wanted to make sure he could be effective and had a clear mandate,
> he says, and he wanted to have independence within the public sector.
> "Because you can really get bogged down by a system and get nothing
> done," he explains. "Especially in this part of the world."
>
> He's up early every day and spends most of his time in the office. He
> complains, only half kiddingly, that he would prefer to be more
> hands-on with patients, but that someone has to do the administrative
> stuff. Still, he travels in pretty rarefied circles: He met with
> President Bush during his trip to Africa this summer, as well as
> Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has poured some $50 million into the
> project Darkoh is spearheading.
>
> Darkoh initially had to overcome the perception that he was too young
> for the job. "I knew that the key to gaining trust was to show that I
> was sensitive to the politics and that I could deliver results," he
> says. "I had to work almost 20 hours a day for the first year of the
> program."
>
> Getting qualified Africans who study abroad to come back to a place
> where they will make less money, face more frustration, and often not
> be able to put into practice some of the advanced techniques they learn
> in Western schools, can be a challenge, say many here.
>
> "Parents pay a lot of money for their children to get the sort of
> training I did," says Ibou Thior of Senegal, another Harvard graduate
> who today is director of the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute. "And the
> expectation is that not only will you make a difference - you will also
> make a living." A person returning from study overseas, argues Mr.
> Thior, needs to be rewarded, not frustrated.
>
> "The government needs to provide good working conditions and
> opportunities so one can apply what has been learned.... Otherwise, you
> might not want, or be able, to return."
>
> No one challenges the system
>
> As an undergraduate at Amherst College in western Massachusetts,
> Kenyatta would set off to see America during weekends or breaks. He
> loved the freedom. "The best time of my life," he remembers.
>
> Once, he and his roommates took a road trip to Florida. Another time
> they caught a cheap charter flight to Los Angeles and drove to San
> Diego, just to see something new. He switched majors several times, in
> the end settling on a double major of economics and political science.
> He dated different women, partied late, and audited random classes on
> slow afternoons. Everyone knew who he was, says an old schoolmate, but
> no one cared.
>
> When he graduated, he was ready to apply for an MBA. The idea was for
> him to run the family's vast business empire. That's what was expected
> of him as the son of one of Africa's big men.
>
> Kenyatta was born in 1961, just as Kenya was shaking off its British
> colonial masters. (In Swahili, his name literally means "independence"
> or "freedom.") His father, who helped bring Kenya this independence,
> dominated the political scene for more than 20 years until his death.
> Almost automatically, power then passed to the elder Kenyatta's deputy,
> Daniel arap Moi, who proceeded to rule for another two decades.
>
> But Kenyatta didn't get his MBA. He went home and chose not to run the
> family's vast enterprises - five-star hotels, airlines, banks, and
> giant farms - that his father had amassed. Instead, public service
> called. "It was always there, my interest in politics," he protests,
> defensive against the charges of nepotism and a life of privilege. "But
> I brought a lot back from the US which really helped me decide. I left
> Kenya thinking one way. But then I was able to sit back and see it all
> in context. It was the first time I saw clearly."
>
> To be sure, study in the West does not automatically bestow
> perspective, integrity, or a penchant for democratic principles.
> Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, for example, has six degrees from
> prestigious Western universities. Few today would consider Mr. Mugabe
> at the vanguard of democratic reforms.
>
> Some say study overseas can be counterproductive, imbuing ideals that
> do not suit the real world back home. But many of those interviewed say
> that overseas exposure made them "global citizens," giving them a
> perspective that they wouldn't have been able to get without leaving
> Africa for a time.
>
> Kenyatta was sheltered growing up, he admits today with a lopsided
> grin. The people around him did not encourage any real challenge to the
> system.
>
> "Things were done one way, and that was the only way," he shrugs,
> resisting a cigarette - he is trying to quit - and smoothing down his
> smart gray suit. He owns traditional African garb - a colobus monkey
> skin and hat, and a fly whisk, for example - but they come out only on
> special occasions. He prefers his designer clothes.
>
> Kenyatta certainly benefited from Kenya's corruption. But unlike many
> other sons and daughters of privilege across the continent, he claims
> to want to fix what has gone wrong. He came back "not exactly to make
> amends," he says, fumbling as he tries to formulate carefully the
> delicate sentence, "but, well, I began seeing there were a lot of
> things not necessarily right with the order of things in Kenya."
>
> 'Are you trying to be white?'
>
> If you are an African, says Darkoh in Botswana, and you leave Africa
> and come back, people more often than not regard you with suspicion.
>
> "They think you have tried too hard to Westernize," he says. "They ask:
> 'Are you trying to be white?'" New ideas and dynamic people are not
> welcomed with open arms, he says.
>
> So governments can become filled with the also-rans. "A crisis like
> HIV/AIDS comes along and everyone looks to the government to address it
> - but they can't handle it," he complains. "Most of the systemic
> institutional inadequacies we are currently experiencing with HIV/AIDS
> existed long before the disease came knocking on our door. HIV/AIDS did
> not create these systemic deficits - it has simply exacerbated them."
>
> The numbers bear out Darkoh's concerns. According to statistics from
> the International Organization for Migration, more African scientists
> and engineers work in the US than in all of Africa. A few years ago,
> Zambia had 1,600 doctors; now only 400 practice there. More than 21,000
> doctors from Nigeria are working in the US. Sixty percent of Ghana's
> doctors left during the 1980s, placing the healthcare system in
> critical condition. An estimated 20 percent of skilled South Africans
> have left the country in the past 10 years, and in Zimbabwe the
> professional workforce has shrunk by two-thirds in just five years.
>
> In order to replace those who have left the continent for greener
> pastures, Africa spends an estimated $4 billion annually on recruiting
> some 100,000 skilled expatriates.
>
> The solution, says Darkoh, is for African governments to invest in
> getting the right people. "Major corporations do not get the results
> they do by hiring weak talent," he explains. "The right people in the
> right place at the right time will deliver the right results." It is
> time for donors and recipient countries to insist on results and
> institute accountability frameworks, he says. "In the 1980s,
> development aid was based on cold war needs, but today, it's about
> accountability. That, coupled with African leaders realizing that they
> themselves have to be more responsible ... those are already
> improvements," he says.
>
> The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is seen as part of
> this shift in approach. Last year, NEPAD was initiated by African
> governments themselves, whereby they agreed to become more accountable
> for good governance in return for billions of dollars in annual
> investment, aid, and debt reduction from wealthy donor countries.
>
> Africa Online's Makatiani, a NEPAD advocate, already sees signs of
> progress in Kenya. "During Moi's time, corruption was the norm and no
> one was ever punished for being corrupt. But time has passed and the
> new government is changing that." In the nine months since Kibaki came
> to power, the government collected more in taxes than in any similar
> period before, and corrupt businessmen, as Makatiani puts it, "are
> running for their lives." Makatiani says these changes can be found all
> over the continent. Corruption "is becoming much less acceptable," he
> says.
>
> Darkoh adds, "Now, the governments need to further shape up and woo
> back their Diaspora communities, instead of making it hard for them."
>
> He would rather be in Africa, he says, than anywhere else in the world.
> He just started his own healthcare services company - BroadReach
> Healthcare - which assists developing countries, donors, and assistance
> agencies achieve better outcomes on investments made in healthcare,
> particularly for HIV/AIDS treatment. He is able to make a meaningful
> and tangible difference in Africa, he says, which he might not be able
> to do in the US. He knows others, Africans and Americans born to
> African parents, who would come back as well - if conditions were right.
>
> "But they worry," he says, about everything from respect and good
> working conditions to security, healthcare, and civil liberties. "You
> might want to be a hero," he suggests, "but when you start thinking
> about actually moving, your mind begins wandering to questions such as
> whether there's a health clinic to go to when your kid gets an asthma
> attack in the middle of the night and what your bank account is looking
> like."
>
> A call for young people to serve
>
> Kenyatta doesn't worry about his bank account. But 10 months after his
> concession speech, his pace has not slackened. He can be found in his
> office until 11 p.m., his crumpled suit jacket tossed over a chair.
>
> He meets daily with NGOs, visits constituencies across the country,
> works on restructuring his party, and, from the benches of the
> opposition in the old assembly hall downtown, raises questions on every
> issue of the day - from constitutional reform to anticorruption
> legislation. He embraces the democratic principle of the "loyal
> opposition" in a country that has never really allowed such a thing.
>
> "I get fed up a lot," admits Kenyatta. "Most of us do."
>
> But, he stresses, the problem is that most young Africans assume
> leadership is a game of others, and not about them. "You tend to lose
> the best minds and best assets because young people don't want to
> engage in the rough and tumble. But that is the wrong mentality. You
> need to engage," he says
>
> Makatiani says the politics of Africa are going into "Phase 2": The
> older generation of leaders were revolutionaries, freedom fighters like
> Kenyatta's father, accustomed to taking big leaps and getting things
> fast, he explains. "But the new generation like myself is more
> realistic and is ready to take smaller steps," he says. "We are ready
> to work hard for incremental, but real, success."
>
> Kenyatta agrees, and says that he embodies that shift. "I believed, as
> a child, it was the right of others to be there and set up the rules of
> the game - and neither I nor anyone else could challenge that. But, you
> know, with more exposure you begin to think more: Actually, I can do
> it, too - and differently."
>
>
>
>
>
> (c) Copyright 2003 The Christian Science Monitor.  All rights reserved.
>
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