Chris Bishop: You believe that US foreign policy is becoming more isolationist. What does that mean for Africa?
Steve Forbes: In terms of the US turning its back on the world, it’s not good for Africa. Turning outward to the world means more trade, greater sense of security which means more investment. Africa has enormous opportunities, even beyond a commodities boom and a lot of entrepreneurship there. What you need is more and more of an environment, structures where entrepreneurship can build real assets. That’s where things like the World Banks’ survey of doing business is helpful, structural changes that you need to make… people don’t realize that there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in Africa – that’s a big place.
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Bishop: What about the visit of President Barack Obama to East Africa?
Forbes: He was going to get applause, and he got some, but I don’t think he fully recognizes what you need to do to get an economy growing. And Africa is up for it. Take Kenya, who would have thought that a place like Kenya would be at the forefront of electronic banking, or world banking, but they are.
Bishop: What would be your advice for foreign policy towards Africa?
Forbes: Well, certainly in the north, you’ve got to have more sense of security and the sense that the bad guys are not going to have the sway in places like Nigeria. Then urge people to put in reforms. What you don’t do is let the IMF give the advice, they still give mostly bad advice, economic malpractice.
Bishop: What about the entrepreneurs of Africa?
Forbes: Without entrepreneurs you don’t flourish, you don’t get the breakthroughs and there’s no lack of energy in Africa.
Bishop: If you were the president of a country in Africa, would you say flat tax from tomorrow?
Forbes: Yes I would. I’d ask the IMF what to do and do the opposite. Putting in a flat tax, tying the currency to the euro, which many African countries have already done. So even though the euro is not the best currency, people trust that more than they do a local currency. So you can say, ‘don’t worry about our central bank, we’re with the euro or the dollar’, so we’ll invest with the sense of security that you’re not going to have a hyper-inflation like it hit Zimbabwe. Then you do that and you put in ease of starting a business. Start practicing real property rights, then you’re going to start to see, rapidly, an emergence of a middle class.
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Bishop: And how likely do you think that is, reading the situation from this side?
Forbes: I think that people recognize that foreign aid was a disaster for Africa. That the Africans are quite capable, in an economic environment, of prospering? I think they’ve already demonstrated that.
Bishop: You haven’t missed a column for 43 years. As a fellow journalist I’d like to say that’s quite something. What sort of legacy do you want to leave in the world of business journalism?
Forbes: I think simply carrying out my grandfather’s vision when he said: “The purpose of business is to produce happiness, not pile up money.” So whether it’s books, or anything else, laying out how we can create that environment where entrepreneurs can flourish, because when they flourish we flourish.

FORBES ON AFRICA IN NEW YORK

Let them be gay in the US, Europe and elsewhere, they will be sad people here,” so says President Robert Mugabe at the roadside in Harare in the eye of his anti-gay storm in the winter of 1995.
I cast my mind back to these words when I heard President Barack Obama talk of an end to discrimination against gays in Africa, during his visit to Kenya 20 years later. I cast my mind forward to the look on Mugabe’s face when Obama said this. In those desperate August days of 1995, people railed against homosexuality saying it was un-African and another disease visited upon the continent by Europeans. We investigated and the answer – politely put – is that this is nonsense.
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The big man in Zimbabwe had been on a roll for weeks. The rant at the roadside, just outside government offices in Samora Machel Avenue, to members of the Zanu-PF women’s league, was vintage Mugabe. We heard late on that cold day, August 18, that he was making the roadside speech and rushed to set up our camera. Mugabe, the consummate orator, spoke his mother tongue, chiShona, keeping a weather eye on our crew. As soon as the cameraman had stopped fumbling and looked down the lens, Mugabe switched seamlessly into English to tell the world gay people would be sad people in Zimbabwe.
“It degrades human dignity. It’s unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings?” says Mugabe –a few days earlier.
Mugabe had shocked the world with a maiden and an astounding and caustic attack on gays, in his speech to open the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. Now, the book fair was always supposed to be the celebration of reading, erudition and light. In 1995, it was the dim, murky power of brute force that ruled the day.
The Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) bore the brunt of it. All they asked for was a stand on which to display their books. The government said no and threatened to withdraw support and the organizers acquiesced and GALZ members were vilified.
“If we accept homosexuality as a right, as is being argued by the association of sodomists and sexual perverts, what moral fiber shall our society ever have to deny organized drug addicts, or even those given to bestiality,” says Mugabe at the opening of the fair. On the way out of the opening I asked Mugabe what his problem was.
“I do not think men should give birth by having wombs,” he replied, surely the answer to another question? It struck us as an obsession too far.
On that night, we ran a TV news item on two black men living in Harare as man and wife. It included a goodbye kiss in the morning that sent shockwaves over the airwaves. Both knew they were risking their lives in telling their story.
If they were in any doubt; the following year, GALZ got its stand at the book fair. A mob burned it down hurling abuse and threats, under the cynical eye of police, at the brave people who tried to run it.
This was a story that reached far beyond the chattering classes. I got to interview a lot of the activists in GALZ over these months and grew to respect them; many working class black lesbians and gays went through hell in the townships far from the middle class book fair. Thugs carried out assaults and burned down houses; families ordered men to rape their daughters in a bid to “convert” them. Even against the background of plummeting human rights in Zimbabwe, it stank to high heaven.
We journalists wondered how a people who had fought against the deprivation of human rights could so easily wipe out the rights of brothers and sisters.
I will never forget the unflinching dignity of those Africans who stood up against it. It is just a shame that so many Africans across the continent are still being forced to do so.

“I Do Not Think Men Should Give Birth By Having Wombs”

At the end of July, United States (US) President Barack Obama visited Kenya as a head of state for the first, and probably last, time.
Obama had previously set foot in Senegal, Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania in official state visits.
During his most recent visit, there were three main agendas for the US leader: he co-chaired the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, renewed relations between his country and Kenya and, finally, emphasized the US’s economic commitment with Africa.
At a dinner hosted by the Kenyan government, Obama confirmed that the idea of expanding trade and investment between Africa and the US had garnered support of both the Republicans and Democrats in his country. These words, and Obama’s attendance at the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, were apt. Kenya is one of the leading countries in Africa for entrepreneurial and innovative spirit.
Obama met entrepreneurs at an innovation fair. While in the country, he maintained a positive outlook on the pace and nature of innovation and entrepreneurship in Kenya. This is deserved. Kenya has revolutionized money transfer services with mobile technology and taken substantial steps at harnessing information technology to enhance both commercial growth and political accountability with platforms such as  .
In a nutshell, Obama’s visit to the country highlighted the innovative and entrepreneurial side of Kenya that the world may not be familiar with. It also provided a unique chance for the tourism sector in the country to receive a much needed endorsement to stem its dwindling fortunes. It is hoped that this visit will attract business back to the country.
Politically, Obama’s visit to Kenya was a welcome development to the current administration whose relations to the US had become frosty. After allegations of human rights abuses when the current government stepped into office, and threats of a more severe approach to economic engagements, the Kenyan government was forced to turn to China. Many, in the US and Africa, have been keen on ensuring that the US does not lose Kenya as an ally. This visit, which some sections of Washington referred to as a ‘renewal of ties tour’, provided the perfect opportunity for rebuilding strained relations between the two countries. Obama’s ancestral ties to Kenya were beneficial and by the time the US president was on his flight to Addis Ababa, after holding bilateral trade talks with President Uhuru Kenyatta, the relationship seems to have warmed.
It wasn’t all smiles though. Obama was critical of African leaders over corruption and gender equality. He attacked Africa’s culture of presidents-for-life, urging the continent’s leaders to respect term limits.
“I think if I ran I could win, but I can’t,” he said, referring to the end of his second and final term.
His comments came as Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in office and the Rwandan parliament voted for a constitutional change to allow President Paul Kagame to run for a third term.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have been in power for more than 30 years.
“Nobody should be president for life. Your country’s better off if you have new blood and new ideas. I’m still a pretty young man but I know someone with new energy and new insights will be good for my country. It will be good for your country, too.”
At the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Obama kept reiterating the need for closer understanding and better economic partnerships between the continent and the US. China has quickly snatched at business opportunities in Africa, leaving many in Washington worried. China’s approach of business with no strings attached has enticed African nations into ditching the Western-based business partnership model. Trade between China and Africa reached an impressive $222 billion in 2014; triple the value of trade between the US and Africa. Obama and the 200 American investors who traveled with him would like to see this gap reduced.
To do this, the US might reconsider its approach to Africa and even try its hand at dealing with countries that it has previously disagreed with on ideological matters.

Praise, Promise And Reproach

The excitement has been building for months. On July 23, Air Force One – the official United States (US) presidential aircraft – will land at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
Across Kenya, the visit of US President Barack Obama is the talk of the town. In Nairobi, enterprising vendors are already producing t-shirts with the words Karibu Nyumbani printed on them. It means welcome home.
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Obama’s vist to Kenya is iconic. He will not only be visiting a friendly nation, he is visiting his father’s homeland. Barack Hussein Obama Sr was a Kenyan who moved to the US in the 1950s to study. The current US president was born in Hawaii in 1961.
His last visit to Nairobi was in 2006 as a senator. Government officials then described him as a junior senator when he called for action against rampant graft in Kenya.
During his upcoming visit, Obama will attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which he will co-host. It will be his first trip to Kenya as president. He has previously visited Ghana, Egypt, Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa.
Launched by Obama in 2009, GES will see more than 1,000 entrepreneurs and investors showcase innovative projects, exchange ideas and create economic opportunities.
While in the country, Obama will meet with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. Setting the stage for this meeting was the two-day visit to Nairobi by US Secretary of State, John Kerry.
The Uhuru-Kerry talks revolved around trade between the two nations and terrorism. The US has pledged to support Kenya’s fight against terrorism, which is a thorn in east Africa’s side and promised $100 million to aid the cause.
“There can be no question that our meetings here today were timely. Events in Kenya and the broader region present us with a broad array of tests. The threat posed by violent extremism is regrettably foremost among them,” said Kerry after meeting with Kenyatta.
Whether Obama, who is in his final term as US President, would visit his father’s homeland had been hotly debated. Since being elected in 2008, Obama has been non-committal on the matter.
This was further complicated by the 2013 elections in Kenya that saw President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto take office. At the time, the two faced charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague in the Netherlands.
It was only at the funeral service of Nelson Mandela in South Africa that Obama first met Kenyatta face to face. A photo of the two shaking hands at the FNB Stadium spread rapidly on social media.  The case against Kenyatta has since been dropped at the ICC. Ruto is, however, still on trial.
Most link this decision by the ICC to Obama finally ‘coming home’. Interestingly, Kerry met Kenyatta in the absence of his deputy. Kenyatta and Ruto have in the past met dignitaries as a team.
Unlike his previous visits to Kenya, Obama’s next trip will be marked with fanfare and splendour. Obama visited Kenya in 1988, then 1991, when he brought ‘home’ his then fiancé and now wife Michelle, and 2006.
There is still uncertainty over Obama taking time off to visit his extended family in the western parts of Kenya. Nevertheless, his late father’s homestead is a hive of activity. The national government and devolved government are working round the clock. Among other things, Barrack Hussein Obama Sr’s grave is being spruced up, just in case the president makes the all-important pilgrimage.
“We are trying to speak to the US Embassy in Nairobi as well as the national government to have President Obama visit Kisumu and hold a public lecture in this region,” says Governor of Kisumu County, Jack Ranguma.
Analysts hope that Obama’s visit will revive Kenya’s tourism industry. A number of western nations which are key source of tourists have labelled the country unsafe.
“This is a strong message to other nations that Kenya is not as insecure as we have been labelled. This visit by Obama is crucial to us in the tourism sector,” says Agatha Juma, the CEO Kenya Tourism Federation.
On the streets however, Kenyans are just happy that one of their sons, who is also the president of the most powerful nation in the world, is returning home.

Tag: President Barack Obama

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

FORBES ON AFRICA IN NEW YORK

“I Do Not Think Men Should Give Birth By Having Wombs”

Praise, Promise And Reproach

Africa Welcomes A Famous Son