Despite economic gains, Obamas work

in Africa is unfinished
What Obama is doing on his final presidential trip to Africa

The trip marks the first time a sitting president has visited Ethiopia. Obama last
traveled to Kenya in 2006, when he was a U.S. senator.

By Juliet Eilperin and Kevin Sieff-July 28

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA In the end, President Obama may have gotten closer to
the bones of ancient mankind than to ordinary Africans on what was probably his last
trip to Africa as president. But no one can say he did not try.
In a region that is home to some of the worlds newest tech start-ups and oldest wars,
Obama tried to reconcile his abundant hope for Africas future with a determination to
tell the truth about its challenges, past and present.
In a major speech to Kenyan students and in more intimate gatherings with members
of civil society, he sometimes seemed torn between heaping praise on the economic
progress that has lifted living standards for millions and acknowledging the corruption,
violence and security issues that continue to afflict the continent.

He celebrated the ingenuity of African business leaders and then promptly confronted
South Sudans deepening civil war. His plane took off for Ethiopia, one of Africas
fastest-growing economies, just as a prominent hotel was attacked in neighboring
Somalia.
[Obama: Africa is on the move]

President Obama told

the African Union on Tuesday that proper training and employment of young people are
key to Africa avoiding further instability. (Reuters)
Object 1

What some had expected to be a sentimental journey for Obama was punctuated with
reminders of a region wrestling with crisis. But that didnt dim the enthusiasm of the
Kenyans and Ethiopians who greeted him, the first sitting U.S. president to visit either
country.
In a speech at the African Union headquarters here Tuesday, he warned that Africas
democratic progress is ... at risk when leaders refuse to give up power, holding up
the U.S. Constitutions term limits as an example. But he added that if he were able to
run again, he could win.
I love my work. But under our Constitution, I cannot run again. I cant run again. I
actually think Im a pretty good president. I think if I ran I could win. But I cant, he
said.
In Nairobi, he spoke Sunday in an arena to a crowd of 4,500, a scene reminiscent of
the kind of adulation he got during the heady days of his first campaign. The city was
peppered with U.S. flags for his visit, which Kenyans described proudly as a
homecoming. Even though onlookers were kept hundreds of yards away by grimfaced men with automatic weapons, they were giddy with excitement.
For his part, Obama embraced Kenya, his fathers homeland, as a place with a special
connection for him. But much of the policy he articulated referred to the countrys
battle against al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, a war that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta
last week called an existential fight.

On Monday, Obama huddled with several African heads of state, discussing what to
do when the latest rounds of peace talks in South Sudan fail; on Tuesday, he spoke to
the African Union about the need to beat back the threat of Islamist terrorists.
The trip underscored that Obamas work in Africa remains unfinished.

What Obama did during his previous Africa trips

The president is on his fourth trip to Sub-Saharan Africa since taking office. Here,
a look back at his visits as a senator and later as president.
[Obama visits a rising Africa but one still plagued by economic problems]

Still, he pointed to some of his administrations signature programs, which have had a
measurable impact in Africa. Feed the Future, an initiative that pairs federal funding
with money from other nations and the private sector, works to boost the productivity
of small farmers in developing nations. The administration released a report
Tuesday saying the program was responsible for a 25 percent reduction in stunting, a
form of childhood malnutrition, in two provinces in Kenya between 2009 and 2014, and
a 16 percent decline in rural poverty across Uganda in recent years.
Also Tuesday, Obama visited the floor of the Faffa Food factory in Addis Ababa, which
makes fortified baby food, flours, barley mixes and other products. A local farmer and
one of the factory workers explained how theyve been able to boost agricultural yields
and overall production with the help of Feed the Future.
Standing near silos and sorting belts, the president told reporters: There have been

questions before about what are some signature initiatives that really make a
difference. This is making a difference in very concrete ways.
The Power Africa initiative, another public-private partnership that aims to add 30,000
megawatts of power to serve 60 million households and business, has attracted $26
billion in pledges from donors and private firms in the United States and abroad.
A fragile foundation
Those initiatives were part of a narrative Obama returned to throughout his visit: Africa
is a continent where problems are being solved, where the middle class is growing,
where countries are modernizing.
But for all the successes, some of the administrations major hopes for Africa have
been dashed by conflict. In South Sudan, where the United States in 2011
championed the birth of the worlds newest nation, civil war has claimed tens of
thousands of lives since breaking out in 2013. In recent weeks, the United Nations
reported that children have been brutally slaughtered.
[ Obama to meet with African leaders on South Sudan]
This week, Obama described continued roadblocks to peace there, and
administration officials expressed pessimism that the conflict would end anytime soon.
In Somalia, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab continues to wage brutal
assaults on civilians and the countrys nascent government. The group also has the
ability to stage attacks across the border in Kenya.
When theyre willing to target soft targets and civilians, and are prepared to die, they
can still do a lot of damage, Obama said in Nairobi on Saturday.
The next day, as the president left for Ethiopia, al-Shabab fighters drove a truck
packed with explosives into the Jazeera Hotel, frequented by foreign diplomats and
journalists in Somalias capital, Mogadishu, killing 15.
The specter of terrorism had made preparing for this trip particularly complicated for
the White House. A law enforcement official familiar with Secret Service security and
logistics planning said the visit had been the most challenging since George W. Bush
went to Islamabad in 2006, based on the level of terrorist activity and lack of
infrastructure in the region.
Aside from terrorism, there were less-violent but still insidious issues that cast
shadows the Ethiopian governments jailing of journalists, for example, and Kenyan
security forces targeting of Muslims.
Those problems, among others, forced Obama to qualify his praise for the continents
progress.
We must acknowledge that many of these gains rest on a fragile foundation, he said
at the African Union on Tuesday. The president said more should be done to promote
democracy. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs or activists are
threatened as governments crack down on civil society, then you may have democracy

in name, but not in substance, he said to applause.

While Obama articulated a U.S. role in building on that foundation, there were
reminders that Africa now has other options and might not always be accepting of a
strong U.S. hand. One example was the very building where Obama spoke: The
African Union headquarters, with gilded emblems and wood detailing, was funded
largely with Chinese money. And the organization is chaired by Robert Mugabe, the
president of Zimbabwe, where the United States continues to impose sanctions
against a regime it considers undemocratic.
In Kenya, the International Criminal Courts indictment of President Kenyatta in 2012
led to a huge chill in bilateral relations, said former U.S. ambassador Scott Gration,
who now runs a business working with investors in Kenya.
When the United States distanced itself from the Kenyan government after the
indictment, Kenya promptly looked east, planning Chinese-funded infrastructure
projects across the country.
But the presidents visit reinforces that theres been a reset of the relationship,
Gration said. I think were over that hump that occurred because of the ICC.
The charges against Kenyatta were dropped late last year.
The most urgent task
In nearly every public setting, the president went out of his way to describe what
young Africans can do to chart a better trajectory for their nations. And at times he
singled out young people, such as 16-year-old Kenyan student Linet Momposhi.
Momposhi described how a friend of hers underwent genital mutilation at age 12,
married a man twice her age and now has three children, whom she supports by
milking cows each morning. Momposhi had a chance to attend boarding school
instead.
And now I would like to be a cardiologist and study at Harvard University, she said.
Before joining the center, I never knew what I was going to do because I never had
any hope in life.
Obama who told her, Im sure youre going to be an excellent cardiologist said
her experience underscored why he has focused on young people of color in the
United States.
And when they have a vision about what could happen, then suddenly theyre
motivated, the same way that Linet is motivated, he said. And she starts having
bigger ambitions about whats possible.
In 2014, Obama launched the Young African Leaders Initiative, which now has more
than 140,000 members, connected digitally and through regional programs.
Ultimately, the most powerful antidote to the old ways of doing things is this new
generation of African youth, the president said at the African Union.

In Ethiopia, Obama attended a state dinner at the National Palace, where he got to
see Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton discovered in the countrys Afar region in
1974; it belonged to what was once considered the earliest known human ancestor.
But the president seemed more focused on Africas modernization than on its history.
More than half of Sub-Saharan Africas population is under the age of 25. With abject
poverty commonplace and the burden of disease high, the continents future leaders
will have massive challenges to confront.
I suggest to you that the most urgent task facing Africa today and for decades ahead
is to create opportunity for this next generation. And this will be an enormous
undertaking, Obama said at the African Union. Africa will need to generate millions
more jobs than its doing right now. And time is of the essence. The choices made
today will shape the trajectory of Africa, and therefore the world, for decades to come.

Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's White House bureau chief, covering domestic
and foreign policy as well as the culture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is the
author of two booksone on sharks, and another on Congress, not to be confused
with each otherand has worked for the Post since 1998.
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