Follow Mahatma: Obama to African leaders

Mangalore Today News Network

Washington, August 4: US President Barack Obama has asked young leaders of Africa to follow Mahatma Gandhi to bring the changes they want in the continent.

"One of the things that I think everybody here has to really internalise is the notion that, you know, I think it was (Mahatma) Gandhi who once said, you have to be the change that you seek, you have to be the change that you seek," Obama said in response to a question after addressing a meeting of Young African Leaders Forum, which he had convened bringing in young leaders from nearly 50 African countries to White House.

In his address to the young leaders from Africa, the first of its kind event organised by the US for African leaders, Obama said Africa’s future belongs to its young people.

"We are going to keep helping empower African youth, supporting education, increasing educational exchanges like the one that brought my father from Kenya, in the days when Kenyans were throwing off colonial rule and reaching for a new future," Obama said, adding "we are helping to strengthen grassroots networks of young people who believe, as they are saying in Kenya today, yes, youth can."

"You represent the Africa that so often is overlooked: the great progress that many Africans have achieved, and the unlimited potential that you’ve got going forward into the 21st century," he added.

"I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world. Whether it’s creating jobs in a global economy or delivering education and health care, combating climate change, standing up to violent extremists who offer nothing but destruction, or promoting successful models of democracy and development -- for all this, we have to have a strong, self-reliant and prosperous Africa," he said.

"So the world needs your talents and your creativity. We need young Africans who are standing up and making thing happen, not only in their own countries but around the world. And the US wants to be your partner," Obama said.

Obama complimented South Africa’s recent success and African development by saying that while there were two European teams in the World Cup Final, Africa was the real winner.

"In the end, I think that this metaphor of the success of the World Cup, and the bombing, shows that each of you are going to be confronted with two paths," he said.

"There is going to be a path that takes us into a direction of more conflict, more bloodshed, less economic development, continued poverty, even as the rest of the world races ahead, or there is a vision in which people come together for the betterment and development of their own country," he said.
PTI