President Obama’s visit to Kenya next week will receive a warm and widespread reception from Kenyans despite those who have been somewhat disappointed with his lack of personal engagement there in view that his father was Kenyan, according to Tania Ngima, one of the 50 Mandela Washington Fellows currently in Atlanta.
Mr. Obama is to attend the sixth Global Entrepreneurship Summit from July 24-26 in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, the first time for the Summit to be held in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected to attract 3,000 or more business leaders, policy makers, investors and entrepreneurs.
The summit was first held in Cairo, Egypt, in 2009. Subsequent Global Entrepreneurship Summits have taken place in Washington; Istanbul, Turkey; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Marrakech, Morocco.
Ms. Ngima said that there is no nationwide travel advisory for Kenya although the U.S. State Department continues to caution visitors to Kenya to be aware of threats of terrorism and crime in some areas.
The Summit was conceived as a means of bringing together entrepreneurs looking to connect and develop networks for encouraging economic growth and spurring employment. It is expected to attract former participants in the Young African Leadership Initiative, which includes the Mandela Washington Fellows.
The administration has justified co-sponsoring the summit in Kenya due to the country’s importance for East Africa’s economy as a whole and the activity of its entrepreneurial sector. Kenya is a leader in mobile money transfer, and has continued to contribute greatly to innovation through creative spaces like iHub, a co-working Internet space for the technology community in Nairobi.
With a population of 45 million, more than 60 percent of Kenyans are 24 years old or younger, a startling fact, Ms. Ngima said, which highlights an urgent need for entrepreneurs to create companies and provide jobs.
The Obama administration recognized this challenge last year when it held in Washington the U.S-Africa Leaders’ Summit during which representatives, including many heads of state, of 51 African countries met to discuss strategies for “Investing in the Next Generation.”
As one of the Mandela Washington Fellows now in Atlanta, Ms. Ngima will not be able to attend the Nairobi conference although her interests are firmly allied with its agenda. However, she will have the opportunity with the other fellows to meet with the president upon his return during a special event at the White House in early August.
Half the fellows here are enrolled in a program hosted by Clark Atlanta University and the other half at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
In addition to pursuing a number of consulting interests, Ms. Ngima currently is a researcher and case studies writer with the Strathmore Business School in Nairobi and an independent columnist for the daily newspaper, The East African Standard. She has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and is a certified public accountant.
She told Global Atlanta that she looks forward to actively developing her consultancy practice upon her return and to creating an investment fund for small- and medium-sized firms in the agricultural, manufacturing, housing and technology sectors.
Mr. Obama launched the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) in 2010 to support the next generation of African leaders. The program enlists 500 participants annually from sub-Saharan countries out of some 50,000 applications. Last year, he renamed the participants Mandela Washington Fellows in honor of Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who served as its president from 1994 to 1999.
The initiative aims at growing into a network of thousands of former participants, who will drive economic growth, enhance democratic governance and strengthen civil society throughout the continent.
As president. Mr. Obama visited Ghana in 2009 and Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in 2013. He visited Kenya in 2006 as a U.S. senator and made personal visits there in 1988 and 1992. His father, Hussein Onyango Obama, was born in Kenya, studied abroad where he met the president’s mother, Ann Dunham, in Hawaii. He died in a traffic accident in Nairobi in 1982.
Following his stay in Kenya, hMr. Obama is to travel to Ethiopia, the first time that a U.S. president will have visited there.
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