President Obama hosts a Town Hall with Leaders: Africa

the ones we've been waiting for good morning Manuela Picciotto is the name my parents blessed me with 32 years ago as my mother cradled me in her arms as a child my dreams to change the world we're big bold bright but as I grew older I came to believe there were only that dreams society had no room for the ambitions of a girl from northern Uganda who hocked fruit juice on the streets of Kampala to help her mother I learned very quickly that family is a support system is the backbone of our society the units of a country and the DNA of a continent but the idea of family somehow clash with the reality of my workplace as a young lactating mother who had gained an education and pursued a fulfilling career my deep desire to raise my children was confused for lack of professional ambition and seen as weakness how could the ability to bring forth human life be the very thing that crushed my dreams and so one grey morning I walked out on a corporate job and went to something I call the higher purpose supporting mothers to win both in the workplace and in their homes not only because women matter other children matter but the dreams of every woman matters though a disapproving looks and daunting whispers that insinuated that I wasn't ready that I was young foolish and an inexperienced but with the support of my family I started my company the cradle Uganda's first childcare center designed to partner with mothers to raise their children while allowing them to fully maximize their potential in the workplace through our work more women are able to sit in boardrooms in Parliament in cockpits they serve in the Army in laboratories in their businesses and work long hard hours in hospitals during epidemics being an Obama leader was possible for me because my mother sacrificed her dreams and so I dedicate my work to women like her so that other women don't have to make that choice today we listen to a leader who was cradled in the dreams of his father raised by his mother and rose with the backing of community to take his place in history he knows that leadership knows no background no age no race no gender he has taught us that no matter who you are you are the one we've been waiting for [Music] and so could we start to our feet with a round of applause and African relations welcome the 44th President of the United States of America [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello everybody everybody have a seat we're gonna be here awhile I'm gonna try to not leave anybody out let's see to bail on Halloweeny Santi Bona do my la da repair ever repair even how's it that's why I'm it's good to see all of you how's everybody doing today doing good so they have me they've got these remarks I'm supposed to breathe before we start talking so let me let me let me see what I've got to say here it's great to be with all of you young people young leaders from all across the continent I gave a long speech yesterday so I'm gonna give a very short one today I want to tell you a little bit about how you came to be here because it speaks to my own journey you know when I was president United States even starting with my first year when we traveled I instructed the State Department and my national security team that whenever possible when I went to a new country I didn't just want to meet with the ministers and presidents and the prime ministers and all those people what I wanted to do was I wanted to meet with young people from these countries because what I felt was that if I could access those who are just coming into their own and who are still open to new ideas and and don't don't yet have enough experience to not tell the truth about what's happening in their countries that I would learn more that it would give me a better feel for what what was happening in the country and we could then be more effective in the work that we did in our foreign policy so I would have these town hall meetings all around the world and when we came to South Africa we hosted our Town Hall in Soweto and we could only fit about 500 people there and we realized obviously the demand was a little higher more people wanted to come than we could accommodate so I'm not that good at technology I'm getting a little better but somebody says well what we should do is we should live streaming and I said what does that mean somebody explained it to me I'm exaggerating a little bit so we set it up and then somebody said well you know what we could do is we can live stream it to four or five different countries and they can have participants who can even ask you questions from these remote sites from Kampala or from Nairobi in Lagos and so we ended up setting up a town hall that didn't just include the 500 in the auditorium not just all of South Africa available televised but now people all across the country and I think somehow we ended up having 20 million or 30 million people watched this Town Hall I couldn't get through all the questions as you might imagine and we thought man there are a lot of young people all across this continent who are hungry for change are doing amazing things how can we capture that energy so we initiated this program called young African leaders program ultimately having talked to the Mandela family we start calling it Mandela fellows and and the young African leaders program Yali would bring fellows to the u.s. match them with institutions that were already doing the kind of work that they were interested in doing and we ended up getting like 50,000 applications for 500 slots so that first class was amazing remarkable in fact if I am not mistaken the person who has helped put this Academy together is a Yali alumni but we thought what are we going to do with the other forty nine thousand five hundred so we started creating a digital network and we started doing regional workshops and would connect people together and we said well if this is good for Africa then why not try it in Southeast Asia and same thing happened and then why not try it in Latin America same interest same demand and what it reminded me was the fact that all around the world you have Pierce you have kindred spirits who are ready to remake business the nonprofit sector politics journalism who are doing amazing things but so often feel isolated in your respective communities and don't have the support and the framework that allows you to scale up fast and and to learn from not just your mistakes but other people's mistakes and they can bolster you when you're feeling discouraged and congratulate you when you succeed so I knew that when I left office this was going to be the thing that would inspire me the most to be able to interact with you and work with you and help you change the world and in the same way that we started the young leaders programs when I was in office here on this continent we thought it made sense to start the Obama you summit here in Africa as well and that's not only and that's not only because Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world where surging access to the internet and mobile technology and historic gains and health and education and poverty it's also because this is the youngest continent and so if if this counts going to move it's going to be because of you and you know it's fitting that so much of the world is here this week to celebrate Nelson Mandela most people around the world think of Mandela as an older man with hair like mine what people of course don't recall is that he started as a very young man your age trying to liberate his country he then inspired me and I got started in my work when I was about your age although all of you have done much more at your age than I was able to do in mine and and you know what I think about when I was at your phase part of what was challenging for me as I I didn't have a lot of role models in the immediate vicinity I didn't have a lot of organizations who were doing the kinds of things that I thought needed to be done and so I ended up I think piecing together from what I was able to read or see or hear about all the different types of movements that were happening and one of the places I looked at was South Africa and I learned about the courage of those who waged the defiance campaign and the cruelty and brutality inflicted on innocent men women and children from Sharpeville to Soweto and I studied Biko's words and Mandela's example in the same way that I studied the civil rights movement in my own country in the same I studied what had been happening in Central Europe and and solidarity and the union movement there and so to walk something in me and and what I hope will happen as a consequence of this group coming together is that you have a little more direct contact with the people who are doing the things you want to do and a little more direct help in getting you to where you want to go and a community that you will build together over time all across the condom already we have thousands of young people who are connected we've got resources we've got training we've got networks we've got a whole bunch of folks sitting in the back who are like my age really ancient who who've already accomplished extraordinary things in various fields you've met some of them during the course of the last few days and all of them want to invest in some fashion in you but what we found in this programs that we've been setting up is the most valuable asset is going to turn out to be the collaborations and the conversations you have with each other and I think that already a lot of you are starting to realize that so I could not be prouder of what you've already accomplished but when when we get all of you together in one room man it's a the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and it's it's it's it's giving us some small sense right now the remarkable transformations that collectively you are going to be able to make manifest in in this continent and beyond so let's get to work all right thank you everybody here's the deal those of you who a few of you may have been you'll see me in town halls or something I just call on people and we just talk so you don't have I'd notice this is not a shy group so I'm not gonna have to encourage that the the only rule I'm going to have is is that when I call on you you've got to stand up introduce yourself explain in one sentence what you're doing and then either offer the question of the comment alright and I'm going to start with two people who submitted their questions on slack and we're gonna start there in part because we want you guys to stay connected on on platforms like slack all right so after that then we're gonna open it up the first person I'm going to call on is Timmy taupe a where where are you right here Danny taupe a you say door were from Nigeria good to see you Thank You mr. president [Music] [Music] so we well did everybody catch the question or I'll just repeat it briefly the question is how do we think about the brain during of talent from the continent and that's obviously relevant to all of you because many of you have gotten fancy college education or professional degrees or you have some sort of skill set that might be in high demand in this global economy and it may be tempting and you may have relatives who are in Toronto or New York or London or Fort Wayne Indiana and I you know there are Africans everywhere it's it's a real issue and it's a real problem in fact the speech that I gave yesterday referred to this process of globalization and part of what has happened is that the Internet the global supply chain has connected the world like never before which means that if you have a skill that it's in high demand now you have a worldwide market that is interested in your skills and more and more not only are we seeing concentrations of wealth but we're also seeing concentrations of talent in various global centers right whether it's Shanghai or Dubai or I and and along with that concentration of talent and wealth then you see concentrations of power that ends up tilting and then the further in the direction of inequality and I think everybody here is gonna have to look inside themselves there's not gonna be a magic answer for how to deal with this because each individual is gonna have to ask themselves where do they want to make their life where did I want to put down their stake but what I do believe is that if we have African leaders governments and institutions that are creating the platform for success and opportunity then you will increasingly get more and more talent wanting to stay and once you hit a tipping point then not only will you start slowing the brain drain but in fact it'll start reversing that so the issue then becomes how do we for example create a situation where if you want to start a business you don't have to pay huge amounts of bribes or you don't have to be connected with the right family in order to get it going or are you able to access credit with relative ease in order to start your nonprofit right there are certain things that government can do I was speaking to this wonderful group and remind me kevin rune earnest so earnest was talking about cameroon and there's a civil conflict there well yeah it's harder to get people to stay if there are a bunch of people shooting each other so so there's some things that government will have to do but here's one thing I will I've observed the amount of impact you can have in your home countries precisely because there may be a less less of a concentration of talent if you're willing to take the risk and undergo some of the challenges and the hardships your chances your odds of being transformative of shaking things up of helping more people are gonna be higher here than they are in in some major world capital main if any of you come to America you'll do wonderful stuff but it's less likely that you revolutionize how education is done in America than it is how you revolutionize education in Tunisia it's less likely that you're gonna revolutionize farming in the United States farming is already pretty well developed if you drive through some cornfields in Iowa they know how to farm there's a lot of corn there the problem in places like the United States is not not enough food it's it's what to do with all the food we've got but in in my father's traditional village in Kenya place called Cole gelo where my sister just set up a Youth Center you drive by a hectare of maize and they're all drooping and there's one you know every two feet and it's just wildly inefficient you go there and you you've got you know skills and knowledge and technology about how to improve agricultural yields without huge amounts of capital inputs suddenly you could change that whole village that whole region that whole country right so so part of the question I think each of you end up having to ask yourselves is is how bigger your ambitions and and I would argue that if you've got really big ambitions then you're gonna stay here you know if you want a comfortable life then obviously there gonna be a lot of takers all around the world last point I'm gonna make about this and this goes back to the issue of of how it's gonna be very hard to separate government from and politics from economics and social development if you create the right conditions and you get that tipping point then the the the cultural sense of belonging and ownership that you will feel from that accomplishment I think can be satisfying in a way that would be different if you are you know just doing well someplace else I think it can affect your your heart as well and and one of the things I'm noticing is in China now if you go to Shanghai or Beijing a lot of Chinese students who stayed in the United States and used to feel as if if I want to start a company I've got a say in Silicon Valley or Austin Texas or Boston now they're all like oh no I am I need to get back to Shanghai because that's where things are happening so so if if the government are doing just the bare minimum just the basics no shooting minimize bribes build some infrastructure and and and and regular electricity right I mean I mean we're not talking about complicated stuff then fairly quickly you can start saying things starting to reverse all right excellent question oh I got a check to see who's next Lillian Otis or Rob Kenya about the president Lillian from Kenya I walk in HIV I work for Kenyan NGO and we focus on the vulnerable groups and reaching them for HIV and gender-based violence services and my question is the world is facing a leadership crisis with a lot of hate and negativity in Africa our political leaders continue to be greedy corrupt and tribal in some cases we have used the verge to get fresh new blood but they seem to get caught up in the same bad habits what advice would you give young aspiring leaders who feel disillusioned to participate in politics or other government positions sharing the negative practices those offices seem to come with and the possibility of selling our souls oh Lord you know when I was mentioning how I started having my early political awakening when I was about your age maybe Rob 21 22 I started to really think how can I change the world and I wanted no part of he liked Torah politics because my attitude was what you just described I thought you know they all seemed kind of slick and phony and yeah I didn't really trust them and so what I believed in was social movements my inspiration was was Gandhi and King and my notion was how do I mobilize grassroots to put pressure on politicians so they're responsive and accountable but not necessarily one of being willing to be a politician myself and so I became a community organizer and I worked in low-income areas and so I did a lot of the kinds of work that you are doing now and I did the amount of knowledge and and love and wisdom that I gained from working at the community level I had transformed me it made me grow up made me into a man but what I noticed was the decisions that were being made we're not being made in the local neighborhood where I was working they were being made someplace else and so I was constantly thinking how do I get more levers more more leverage to affect change at the local level and I started looking at City Hall and and how decisions were being made at the city level then I started looking at well funding for education that was affected at the state level in in in America and then there was there was a steel plant that had closed because this is at a time when a lot of manufacturing in America was moving overseas to look for cheaper labor and those decisions weren't even being made in the city they were being made in New York by some finance seers and so I thought okay I need more knowledge I need to figure out how I can get more leverage and I ended up going to law school even when I got out of law school I still was not interested in politics and I started practicing civil rights law and voting rights law thinking that a more direct way of changed then purely the local level was now to get people mobilized to vote to impact those decision-makers somewhere else and then it just so happened that there was a seat for a local government office that opened up and some people said well you know you're talking all the time mr. big talk why don't you why don't you try it out and I and I did and I won and I did you know when I reflect back on my career there was sort of a fork in the road at that point and and all of us in our lives will come to Forks in the road where you know that way offers a vision of a life it has some pluses and some minuses and then that for same thing and you know I took this one it worked out I ended up being a fairly successful politician but there are times where I reflect and say you know had I not decided to run and I decided to take what I had learned in my law practice and I'd started building a local organization and trying scale it up and do more economic development in low-income communities start first in Chicago and we built a good model and then I transported that to Los Angeles New York other cities and began to network with people who were doing urban development and poverty alleviation and education programs around the world I might have had a significant impact that way too so I guess the point of the story is there's no one way of doing it I think there are a lot of different ways in which you can effectuate change the one thing you can't do is pretend that politics doesn't matter and say to yourself that's too corrupt that's too broken I'm not gonna get involved in it because at some point if you are ambitious about what you are doing in your home country you will confront politics you're going to want to build a center and now you need approvals in order to get the land and suddenly the governor decides you know what's in it for me and you're gonna have to deal with that you're gonna need some financing if you go to the local bank well suddenly the bank says well who sent you right suddenly politics is mismanaged in your country next thing you know right in the middle of you trying to build your Center there's an ethnic conflict going on and everything shuts down for six months and your project stops and because people are scared so you can't avoid government and you can't avoid politics and and then the question becomes alright how do I want to engage it do I want to run for office some people have the personality and the inclination to do that some people don't you know they may not want to be the public face of something other people will say okay I don't want to run but I think I can help organize and manage the efforts of people who I think are sincere and have integrity and so they'll be involved in the political world but in a different way some people may say I don't want to be involved at all in campaigning but I do want to mobilize people to vote and participate some people may be journalists and they say my job is to hold politicians accountable and make sure that we're shining a light on how public monies are being spent and how decisions are being made all that is contributing to the quality of government and so you don't have an excuse to say this is too corrupt and I'm gonna be selling my soul find a way where you're not selling your soul but you still have to be involved in government and in politics look I don't want to make light of the fact that some countries being involved in politics is dangerous you know there are some places where reporting on what's really happening can land you in jail and and I am never going to be somebody who urges people to do things and just ignore the consequences of the decisions people have families people you know have children you know there are there risks that each of us have to measure in terms of how far we're rolling willing to go which is partly why but my final piece of advice about politics is do not do it alone Africa like a lot of places has a history of charismatic leaders around which everybody rallies but not as effective about creating collective organizations and collective leadership and the problem with charismatic leaders is a if they end up not turning out as wonderful as you'd like things can be worse if they're charismatic and they consolidate power and then they do whatever they want problem number two is if they die now suddenly all the energy that's been built dissipates problem number three is governance is not the same as getting elected and a lot of times somebody who's a charismatic leader may not know how to set up effective schools or properly administer a budget and so so the goal of politics is not just getting elected the goal is governing in a way that improves people's lives and that requires a collective that requires a team with people of different expertise so so as you are thinking about and politics in your role in relation to it think about how can you find like-minded people whose values you share whose vision you share and how can you collectively then start doing the work to bring about changes and maybe it starts at the local level maybe it starts at a regional level as opposed to national right away I sure hope though you you you get involved some way women in particular by the way I want you to get more involved because because men have men have been getting on my nerves leaving I mean I just every day I read the newspaper and I just think like brothers what's wrong with you guys I mean what's wrong with us alright I mean we're we're violent we're bullying we you know just not handling our business so so I think empowering more women on the continent that autumn right away is gonna having lead to some better policies so alright let's see let's see oh wait wait wait everybody just just stay in your seats don't I'm not gonna suddenly call on you just okay this gentleman right here thank you very much mr. president so his Excellency Julius bill my review of Sierra Leone recently appointed me as the country's first chief innovation officer thank you very much and in your presidency you created and worked with institutions like USGS digital services and 18f to build institutions that focused on transforming the lives of citizens through technology and innovation like healthcare.gov which are challenges but obviously impacted millions of people so the question is for some of us who are thinking about actually doing and driving innovation across and within government for service delivery and citizen engagement and thinking about the ecosystem what leadership models and advice would you offer to us such that we're able to not only engage the people within government bring resources from outside but as you mentioned work with the fundamental authorizing environments that the citizen the citizens themselves who will serve those innovations thank you well I think it's a great sign that your government recognizes the opportunities and each country here is going to vary in terms of the the platforms the infrastructure that exists the great thing that we're seeing all of you know this better than I do is that here on the continent and it's similar and in parts of Asia your leapfrogging all the old legacy technologies that you know we had to build out in the United States right everybody's laying all these liens and all this stuff and suddenly here people are just dropping a bunch of cell towers fairly efficiently and everybody's got a phone and in some ways you are ahead of what's happening back home in terms of people seeing that the constant day-to-day utility of transactions and communications and banking and all kinds of stuff just off a remote device so the opportunities I think are vast to directly engage with citizens and and make sure that they are getting everything they can out of government and the effective and efficient way in terms of how you you organize team internally what I've found is that initially at least what works best is have a very specific problem that you're trying to solve rather than bringing together a bunch of people to sit around the room and say hey what can we do with neat technology and doing a bunch of you know abstract theoretical conceptualization instead think about what are we trying to make sure that our local farmers know their prices for their crops and they can get them to market fairly and is there a way for us to make sure that that's posted every day so that they are getting full value that's a very specific problem in which now that you're technologists can go out with the with people who are doing agricultural policy sit down with a bunch of farmers look at who's who are the middlemen has the market working what are the specific barriers or roadblocks or what would be the information that would solve the particular problem that that small farmer is having and now in an iterative fashion you are designing something for them all right and then next okay on education how do we that the thing we want to do is we want to make sure that young people who may not have access to enough teachers so I was mentioning and my father's village you've got one teacher for every 78 children that's a lot of kids per child this is a very rural remote area so so what are the specific things that we could do to [Music] be a force multiplier to enhance and increase the ability of a teacher if you can't afford a whole bunch of the best thing to do obviously would be to hire five more teachers but if you can't do that are there ways in which we can set up a laptop or an iPad that helps the teacher track student progress in a more efficient way so at least they can spot who is having trouble with this no arithmetic problem so so I think the more you're focusing on specific problems then I think what you'll discover is you can build out a team fairly quickly and what I also believe is if if your government is clever and willing to throw its weight around a little bit you will get companies to [Music] volunteer provide a supplementary work force that will help you solve the problem for free you know you mentioned for those of you who are less familiar with this I'd won this Healthcare battle we're the only advanced country in the world that really doesn't have universal health care we made a huge stride with this legislation we passed we had to set up a platform because of procurement issues and the US government is terrible about buying software the thing didn't work when it was supposed to so we had to scramble to fix it and essentially we just called up Facebook Google stripe you know we had a bunch of friends in Silicon Valley we said send us some engineers help figure this out and what you discovered was that in every one of these companies there are coders engineers who are well compensated are really top of the line in terms of what they do but you know what they don't always have a sense of purpose about their work that they're they're designing some algorithm for some new version of you know NBA 2k and that's nice but they don't feel like they're have an impact and what we found was we could get people to volunteer for six months a year some cases two years to just come and work and solve a problem so that I think you'll find if you have clarity about what it is that you're trying to get done you'll be able to mobilize resources for it now all this presumes obviously sort of a base network and that the government possesses a platform off of which you can work and and I'm not the expert on this but we can get you in contact with experts to learn from mistakes that have been made and that's something that I think as part of the function of this group right is to put you in touch with people who know more than I do certainly about it young lady in the red just speak up a little bit even though I can hear you but I want to make sure everybody can my name is Holden Osman and I'm Somalia and I would like to ask you a question Somalia with the longest coastal in our continent about 3300 square square mile and especially economic zone almost a million square is devastated by illegal fishing and estimated to cost Somalia 400 million to success why is the international community it's love to address this serious problem they are particularly hit hard fragile countries and all red coastal states that don't have the resources to control their territorial waters when piracy was a serious global problem addressing affecting global trade the international community took decisive action to read the UN Security Council have however the international community is reluctant to take decisive action against illegal fishing they affect our region is there a double standard thank you yes there is a double standard absolutely yeah rich countries if it's their boats that are being pirated they will come in and protect them if on the other end it's their boats that are scooping up all the fish they're not gonna do anything about it so yeah there's a double standard out that doesn't mean we can't try to reduce the hypocrisy and actually address the issues and I'll just make a couple of quick points not number one I mean Somalia is just barely beginning to reconstitute itself as a functioning government and I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know if you have chronic civil war and chronic violence in your countries then a whole lot of things are gonna go wrong and so fishing overfishing in Somalia is let's face it one of the least problems that Somalia is faced over the last 20 years because people have just been fleeing for their lives or trying to avoid yeah organizations blowing up their cities or their towns and and and that goes back to the point I made earlier politics and governance matters and and and we can't run around that now having said that I do believe that there are enough international organizations that are concerned with overfishing generally are concerned about conserving our natural resources generally that it is possible even if Somalia as a government doesn't have the leverage to deal with trawlers from wealthy Middle Eastern countries or Japanese fisheries fishermen or bored Chinese fishing vessels even if it's Somalia on its own can't patrol that you may be able to make common cause with people who are concerned about oceans generally and they may have more leverage and Club which then allows you to essentially write on the the work that those organizations may have done in their home countries or in the UN or in other organizations they could end up having a positive impact and you might be able to start a a model program of policing your coastal waters that is one of the reasons and I don't know whether you've been doing these workshops in these workshops whether you've gotten this specific but but one thing that all of you should just get in the habit of doing is analyzing who has power influence on the particular problem or issue that you're working on and and you know what I used to do workshops as a community organizer I teach people in a very basic way to do what we called a power analysis and it was very simple you know we just get a big block of paper and now I guess you could use an iPad or you know some some fancy thing but you don't have to have that just get some big paper and you put it up on a wall and you start asking yourself okay our concern is over fishing off the coast of Somalia who how's this happening why is this happening and so you start off with well okay you know yeah here are the countries whose ships are doing the fishing and and are they commercial enterprises do their governments know that they're doing it and you would analyze that you know then you go next and you'd say alright who in Somalia has any kind of influence impact or decision-making around what happens in the waters and you'd start mapping out well there's somebody in the government who's supposed to be in charge of this it sir are there any companies that are involved they could be targeted because maybe it turns out that some of these fisheries are are taking out fish and then they're selling them in supermarkets in fancy countries in Europe and if you started a boycott and those companies got embarrassed then that might prompt them to change who they were buying their fish from which in turn might have an impact and didn't give you right so you'd start evaluating how is this thing happening and you do that before you then put together a plan for how you're gonna solve the problem and it's interesting we oftentimes don't take the time just to kind of think things through right you know we were talking about in Tunisia you remind me of your name Fatih is it has started a coding courses and programs for young people to get them involved in coding she's been working mostly with private schools now she's trying to think how can I expand potentially to the public schools and Tunisia well before you get started you'd want to know who's making decisions about funding public schools in Tunisia what companies are already providing services to the education system in Tunisia who's getting those contracts at what level are people deciding whether some some portion of a curriculum comes in or not has it done at the principals level of a school or has it done at a a regional board you can save your level yourself a lot of time and energy and mis and avoid a lot of mistakes just by doing the research and then shaping your plan around where the the points of entry are for you to start having an impact now one thing that may happen I'm gonna be honest you may do that analysis and discover I don't have leverage here it's it's it's a it's an issue that's too big it's out of reach for me right now so maybe what I should be focusing on is let me focus on a more local thing that I can get done right now that then builds allies colleagues other organizations and and and slowly we're building more power but more influence so that we can eventually take on an issue that involves international organizations and international commerce and and you want to be bold and you want to be aggressive but you also want to be realistic about what are the steps that you can take right in front of you if you see a mountain I want you to all believe that you can scale the mountain but you're not going to just hop up the mountain you know in a day they're gonna figure out before you start looking at the peak what are the paths and where where can I set up a base camp and what kind of supplies am I gonna get you know how do I get used to the altitude and and and that kind of strategic work is something that all of you have to practice doing and it's not as complicated as I think sometimes people make it out to be you know and and this is by the way where sometimes business and business practices are useful to adopt even if what you're doing is in the nonprofit sector because they're accustomed to having to think in those terms because everything is reduced to balance sheets and numbers and dollars and cents or whatever your currency happens to be and so we can provide you with when you start honing in on some of these problems we can provide you the resources to potentially start figuring out how to think through it but but I guess what I was gonna say about business is there was a there was a famous management expert named Peter Drucker and he wrote a lot about management and he was one of the early management gurus and you don't have to read his entire book because they're really long but but there's one line that is really helpful to keep in your mind and that is most organizations spend a lot of time thinking about doing things right but actually the first thing you should do is to make sure you're doing the right thing all right so so if you do a great job building a road through a jungle perfectly engineered got all your resources cetera but you went to the wrong place that's not good and you say so you've got to spend a little more time thing about are we where are we going what is it that we're trying to accomplish all right whoa all right let me see let me see let me see no I you know I was told that that in the previous panels they were calling on all the people the front I got I got it that's the story I heard that's the word on the street that gentleman right there in the soup right around the corner there Thank You mr. president my name is Robert cotton D from Uganda the executive director of sports outreach we use sports to restore hope and transform lives the founder of some chess Academy a program that movie without unity and love for each other the to be so hard for Africa to get better mr. president what is your take on the idea of having the United States do you think it's the remedy that can help us overcome the political conflicts that have claimed lives I believe that and I spoke about this yesterday that our North Star our long-term goal is for us to unify and recognize our common humanity and and work together to build a better life for every child on this planet you know I before I before I came here I was as I told you in my father's village before that I actually was out on safari for a few days in Tanzania and you know one of the great things about being out in the open being in the wild is it gets you back down to basics and you know you're seeing hyena eating wildebeest and lions you know sleeping most of the time and you know elephants are in their herds and and at its most basic the idea the fact that humans actually make these distinctions between each other because their hair is a little bit different or they're all darker or lighter would be the equivalent of you know seeing an elephant with slightly smaller ears and saying oh you know that's a completely different animal it is so obvious that we're the same and that we have common hopes and dreams and aspirations that it's hard to it's hard to figure out why we're so stupid around this issue and I believe that's true between blacks Asians whites then you end up having even among folks who are all black they start making distinctions and they start deciding oh well that person has a slightly different dialect let me kill him or let me just take his food or his land so yes the aspiration of unity I think is one that we all should be striving for realistically I'd be I'd settle right now for like a unified Kenya or unified Uganda or a unified unified Cameroon I'd I'd start with can we all get along just within the existing borders that we've got and if we were able to do that then we could start having a conversation about pan-african unity look we all know the reasons why it in some case has been particularly hard in Africa right you have national boundaries that did not correspond to traditional tribal or clan boundaries and and so we you know we understand the legacy of colonialism and all that there does come a point at which I think Africa is gonna have to say no more excuses yeah we know what happened in the past but in almost every in every country basically in Africa Africans have been in charge of the country for a very long time right King Kenya was was gained independence and in 1963 I was two years old and here's a good statistic to keep in mind Kenya had the same per-capita GDP in 1963 as the Republic of South Korea the same and now 10-15 fold and it's not as if Korea doesn't have corruption and all kinds of different problems but it does mean that at a certain point it fortified itself and focused and said let's let's get moving so so you are you are correct in identifying the problem I think before we start getting into pan-african each of you should be focused and working on how within your own countries you can develop some cohesion but create a network of like mines that's pan-african that's what you're starting here today to exchange ideas and best practices and to learn from each other and to build and commercially I think the abilities of creating effective African markets that is something that can be done for example on this continent the fact that you have infrastructure that makes it easier to send products to Spain or Paris than to your neighboring country that's a problem that's the kind of integration that doesn't you know presume on all African government it just means the two governments are having enough of a conversation they say hey let's build a train so our farmers and your farmers or or power is a perfect example somebody mentioned earlier the issue of power when I was in the White House we started something called power Africa you know oftentimes to get the the economies of scale particularly for clean energy you should be doing it across national boundaries based on are there geothermal resources or you know if we want to create a storage energy storage facility that then is distributing across a rural area that may be the most efficient way of doing it may not correspond to national boundaries that kind of cooperation we should be able to do right now that doesn't require a United States of Africa to get done it does require governments with some sense and focus and attention okay [Music] huh you know what how about some how about the person who weight like the flag I mean this is like you know they'd be uh I mean III will say that's cheating a little bit but but that's okay I decided to go ahead and call on you anyway he was planned thank you sir please can I call you uncle Obama no I bring greetings from my friends from Cameroon all of them I like please beat him for me so my question is what's your name Emilia Miki from Cameroon okay what do you do I am the founder and CEO of Danis Miki Foundation it's a nonprofit organization ID remember for my dad passed away when I was 14 years old and I had to school myself from then till I had my degree so my question is with the work I've been doing the community for the past eight years I've gained traction and I have a lot of political practice coming to me now like we want you to be in our party and since you've made a choice to choose a political party what were the values you found in the political party before you became a member because I'm at the pouring away I don't want to get into the wrong party and lose my value so what did you use as values to choose a political party and can we dance with you because you said yesterday you a good dancer when do it dance with you well I don't know if there's a dentist party planned I know we're gonna go do some community service if somebody's got like a Beats or boombox or we start getting some music going I will say if we're doing painting though we can't dance while we're painting because then it's gonna look terrible but but we could have a little dance break so all right so that's on that front the United States is is somewhat unique in its a political system because of the way we the way our voting rules are set up you haven't seen the evolution of multi-party systems and we don't have a parliamentary system so you don't get a percentage you know if you get a certain percentage of vote then you get a certain percentage of seats it's it's very much winner take all and as a consequence what's involved is essentially a two-party system occasionally third parties have emerged but they have fairly quickly been absorbed by one of the major two parties partly because of voting rules so you're essentially at the Democratic Party the Republican Party I don't think anybody's born with a party to label the last I checked babies don't get printed Oh Democrat Republican obviously family as influenced history regional preferences can have an impact for me the question was given the values that that I believe in given the vision of the kind of world I want to create which of the two parties at that particular point in time best reflected those values in that vision in the United States there was a time where I might have been a Republican because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and at that time it was the Republican Party that was opposing the expansion of slavery in the United States today it's the Democratic Party that reflects the values that I spoke about at the lecture at the Mandela lecture yesterday and that doesn't necessarily mean that will always be the case it doesn't mean that in every instance I have agreed with the Democratic party platform but broadly speaking when you look at who's been concerned about broad-based economic growth who's been concerned about civil rights who's been most supportive and making sure that women are treated fairly in the workplace who supported collective bargaining who has been most concerned with environmental issues including climate change right now that happens to be the Democratic Party that and again that wasn't always the case there used to be more variation and different ideological views even within the parties so you you know you might have more flexibility I don't know enough about Cameroonian politics to know how you would think about it the one thing I would be cautious about would be if there are parties that are primarily organized around ethnic or tribal lines and that's really the only rationale they have for being a party it's not based on principles it's not based on platform it's not based on ideas then that's how over time I think parties get in trouble because then then it's really just about yeah we're not starting the dance party yet so whoever's got the a part of the reason that you end up getting corruption in government is if you are organizing on the basis of clan or tribe and you don't have any platform or principles underlying then typically the question is are it has our clan or tribe one and once it has we then divide up the spoils because the only thing the only reason anybody supported you is well you know your law or your Kikuyu or your bond to word your Xhosa or whatever it is and if that's the basis for keeping people together then once somebody's in power they don't have an agenda they don't have a the other question is well who's getting the jobs who's getting the contracts who's getting the bribes it's one of the dangers of that kind of politics so so I think the most important thing is think about the platform and the policies and what you believe it alright last question just relax we're gonna be on the Internet we're gonna be hanging out this is just the start this is our first conversation it's not our last hold on a second just let me let me let me cut out take a look here I don't know I'm just so it's so confusing it's everybody is so good-looking and ever okay what what late lately here here's here's officer first of all if somebody from your country has it already been called on keep your hands down so so what do we got what's what's again you shove ever eight there are hosts or South Africa right we got a uh you know we had we had to give our hosts a little preferential treatment thank you thank you thank you mister president you made a good choice if I do say so myself my name is Mandela I am from Johannesburg and I work for the Ministry of Home Affairs we stamped your passport when you flew in thank you very much the question I have for you is around gatekeeping and the old guard you know you talked about not starting out with political ambitions but eventually you had them yeah and myself and a lot of young South Africans that do have political aspirations what we find is that there's an old guard that wants to dictate who gets opportunities and who gets to enter the space and it's and we feel we have vision and skills and things to offer but there's an old guard that seems to say you have to look like this you have to sound like this and so how did you break through that we're ideal it's like you were and we feel like we want to change things and offer something new how did you break through you know the old guard that wanted to dictate to you at the time when you were trying to run for office well first of all first of all old heads are everywhere who want to keep things the way they are that's the nature of humans that's not unique to South Africa and by the way it's not unique to politics there is an old guard in business that wants to protect how they do things and there's an old guard and in art that says to Picasso what you're doing is crazy it doesn't even look like it's supposed to and right I you know so so that's the history of humanity it's not unique South Africa or Africa what is true I think is that in politics I was talking to some some folks about this earlier one disadvantage that African politics has is that when politicians leave office they don't have someplace to land a lot of times in many of our countries in Africa you know it's like that's where you are going to have the most power the most economic influence etc in America you know if you retire from politics oh you might join a corporate board or some investment bank will hire you to give advice and creative and or you might end up getting a teaching post and so it can at least encourage some people to make way and hear oftentimes those options don't exist now it goes back to the point I was making earlier about tribalism though and and and and that kind of politics sometimes what happens also as leaders they may be ready to go but all their cousins and friends and the people who've been making money off them having that position say no no no no you can't go because this is our whole economic engine here all right so now having said all that I don't think there's a formula here I think you just have to go for it now you have to be strategic about it but but this is where a politics that mobilizes the grassroots is more likely to break through than a politics that is based on transactions if you are trying to maneuver to have the right sponsor and you know like patron and you're gonna get slotted you know and then you may have to wait a long time because that's just the nature of those transactions but if you are mobilizing young people or you're mobilizing your farmers who feel that nobody's paying attention to them or you're mobilizing college students who are unemployed or you are doing something that is showing that you're making a difference then nobody can take that base from you it's not dependent on somebody from the top it's coming from people you've earned it from the bottom and I think that ends up making the biggest difference when I ran for president in 2008 yeah I've been fairly well known at that point because of speech I had given at the Democratic convention I've got a lot of coverage and a lot of publicity I have written several books but I was running against somebody was much better known and the establishment was much more supportive but I just got a bunch of 25 year olds and 20 year olds and trained him and said here let's go knock on doors and talk to people and they've I would organize everybody because they were hungry and they were motivated and they believed in something and we surprise people if I had if I had been trying to do it transactionally it would not have worked now one last thing I want to say though about politics and the relationship between politics and what you're doing I used to have these White House interns come in on a regular cycle it's part of a White House internship program and I I would typically get them together at at the end of their time at the White House maybe every six months and they'd ask me questions about and all of them were ambitious and eager would talk about politics and one piece of advice I always gave them that I'd like to leave you all with and it's a it's a piece of advice that somebody gave me once when I was a little younger than you but I always carried it with me and it served me well worry less about what you want to be and worry more about what you want to do and and when I mean by that is a lot of politicians think in terms of I want to be governor mayor prime minister president Member of Parliament whatever it is so they see it as sort of a position to get a prize to win and they then blindly followed that ambition but how they get there increasingly doesn't matter and if in fact they do get there they don't know what to do with it except to just keep it they've been fighting all these years to finally finally they've got their position what I do it well I keep it if on the other hand you're worrying more about what do you want to do and you say what I want to do is make sure that every young person in Libya has the chance to read or I want to make sure that health in Tanzania is available to women in rural areas or I want to make sure that the internet is providing access to capital for small businesses if if that is your mission you may never become mayor governor prime minister but during the 10 years that you would have been striving to try to get that position you would have been helping thousands ten thousands hundreds of thousands of people and by the way people will be watching the fact that you actually do what you say you wanted to do and now if you do decide to go into politics you've got something to show other than your own ambition you've actually got something that you've delivered and if you don't make it you can sleep well at night because you've lived a good life and if you do make it you actually know what you now want to do even more because you've already learned from it that by the way does not just apply to politics the the business leaders I know who are most successful typically they're successful because they were just really interested in what they decided they were going to do Bill Gates didn't start off saying I'm gonna be you know the richest guy on earth he was just a computer geek typically really successful business leaders they find something that just fascinates them and make it doesn't mean they don't have a business plan it doesn't mean that money is not important it but but there's something a vision that they have about what they want to build so so don't just worry about what you want to be worry about what you want to do all right no I think we got to go get to do some work so I'm proud of all over there I'm going to see you guys soon [Music]

Channel: Obama Foundation

Views: 74,692

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Id: IQ_6wGnapRs

Length: 91min 45sec (5505 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018