With Obama in town everything else seemed less important

Power shows will always be fascinating to witness whether it is the noisy fellow who offers to buy drinks for everyone at the bar or the President of the United States of America showing up in Nairobi with his robust security team of men and machines that brought life to a standstill. Haven’t you heard and read enough about Air Force One and the Beast? The euphoria around Barack Obama’s visit comes from the fact that he is the first sitting US president to visit Kenya. The significance of the visit was further magnified by the fact that he was actually visiting home which explains the Twitter hash tag #ObamaReturns. He was warmly welcomed at the airport by his sister Dr Auma Obama who received an emotional hug, a picture of which trended instantly. I intentionally refuse to refer to her as Barack Obama’s half sister because I generally dislike that business of using fractions when referring to family. Family is family. This business of half sister, half brother or step brother is not something I am ready to adapt to at my age. As someone else asked, do you also get half uncles and half aunts and do half sisters become half grandmas eventually? Anyway I digress. Obama’s visit comes at a crucial time when Kenya and other regional neighbours need quick and lasting solutions to the global threat of terrorism if we are all to thrive and ride the wave of a continent on the rise. The threat of terrorism poses a big danger to the potential of the region as far as entrepreneurship is concerned. Right now Kenya is positioning itself as the hub for business technology innovations thanks to the phenomenal Mpesa invention and the financial ecosystem that has emerged all around it and has been borrowed by other countries in East Africa and all over the world. Among other things, Obama came to talk about entrepreneurship and how the US government can support entrepreneurship not just in Kenya but on the continent generally. He travelled with some of the big names in technology and business plus US government officials. I loved some of the points he made during his speech at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Gigiri, Nairobi on Saturday morning. Obama urged governments to be “facilitating not parasitic of entrepreneurial efforts”. “If half your team is not playing, you have a problem. In too many countries, half of the team is women and youth,” Obama said. No truer words could have been said at that summit than those ones. Countries like Rwanda have long acknowledged the role that women play in the development of the country. However the general picture reveals that the potential of the youth is yet to be fully exploited. Many countries in regions have come up with various youth initiatives that look and sound so good on paper but on the ground, the mafia ‘tenderprenuers’ continue to call the shots as corruption thrives. His host, Uhuru Kenyatta used the opportunity to remind the world that Kenya is a hotbed of vibrant culture, spectacular beauty, wonderful people and possibilities. I am sure CNN got the message this time. I was one of those who was not impressed by the #SomeoneTellCNN because the station is a repeat offender when it comes to errors and careless coverage of the issues in Africa. I just pray that more efforts be directed at improving our own media establishments so we never have to get worked up by what CNN says. All said and done, the Obama frenzy hogged so much news space that other key happenings largely passed by with little mention or concern. Burundians (well some of them) held an election that we were later told President Pierre Nkurunziza won. The East African Community Secretariat however released a statement saying “the electoral process fell short of the principles and standards for holding free, fair, peaceful, transparent and credible elections as stipulated in various international, continental as well the EAC Principles of Election Observation and Evaluation.” Elsewhere, the first malaria vaccine (Mosquirix) developed by GlaxoSmithKline was approved by European regulators and WHO. The vaccine is expected to benefit the millions of children especially in sub-Saharan Africa who often die of the disease. And last but not least, as expected, a child born at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Refferal Hospital at 8:30pm on Friday night was named Airforce One Senator Barack Obama. Yes you read that right.

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With Obama in town everything else seemed less important