Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
- Thread starter TommyHilltrigga
- Start date
Did that happen during the Kanem empire?
Yes.
mbewane
Knicks: 93 til infinity
Props for the info you got on this breh, I've had the opposite sentiment and have heard/seen stuff that have led me to believe more of the contrary (also young black men of the diaspora here in France that avoid that issue for religious and social -living in the same areas- reasons), so I'm on the fence on this one. Obviously not being an insider (being neither Muslim nor from a majority Muslim African country) I can't say much more on the issue, so if your research has shown you otherwise good, I'll pursue mine
TBH the fact that one slave trade is more discussed than the other probably also has a lot to do with American soft power (which is why everyone knows about slavery in the US, much less about slavery in Brazil for example), on top of the religious and "postcolonial" solidarity.
Misreeya
Pro
And your American government is better alternative. Although i don't care for Bashir with his islamist dictatorship, but American intelligence agencies are no angels.
I think i post this before.
process that.
CIA training and equipping Sudan’s intelligence agents: report - Sudan Tribune: Plural news and views on Sudan
CIA office in Khartoum is the largest one in the Middle East: official - Sudan Tribune: Plural news and views on Sudan
There is so much i can say, but i can't so i will leave it there.
Throughout the middle east and North Africa, which i often hear people love the American people, but they hate your Government.
Last edited:
Uh... fukk the American government too. fukk both of them.
Misreeya
Pro
I suggest you edit that, as a person with this kind of experience freedoms are not always absolute regardless to what nation you live in.
Red Shield
Global Domination
Frangala
All Star
Frangala
All Star
BREAKING THE TREND
African countries are seeing a “brain gain” as young elite graduates give up on the West
Obinna Ukwuani moved to Nigeria from the US (Ukwuani)
SHARE
WRITTEN BY
Chidinma Irene Nwoye
November 24, 2017 Quartz Africa
In July 2017, Alexandra Ndiwalana, 28, moved back to Johannesburg, South Africa after ten months of pursuing her MBA at the IE Business School in Madrid. By returning home right after her completing her studies abroad, Ndiwalana joined an emerging crop of African graduates that seem to be reversing the continent’s long-running brain drain problem. It’s a trend that offers some hope of bridging the continent’s huge skills gap.
Nearly 70% of African MBA students at the top 10 US and European schools planned to return home and work after graduation, found a survey by Jacana Partners, a pan-African private equity firm. Another study shows nine in ten African PhD students studying abroad plan to work on the continent.
Motivations behind the trend are understandable given the once promising “Africa rising” narrative and the continent being home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies.
“In the West, it seems like there’s a glass ceiling—”le plafond de verre”—that cannot be broken.” Today, however, that narrative has grown increasingly doubtful due to a downturn in the commodities boom that had driven it in the decade running up to 2015. With slowing economic growth, the longstanding lack of infrastructure, corruption and high unemployment challenges, it would be difficult to make an impact—even if you’re an expensively trained graduate from a top American or European university.
Alexandra Ndiwalana returned home to Johannesburg with an MBA from Madrid.
When Ndiwalana left her job as a management trainee at a multinational brewery and beverage company in South Africa, she went to Spain with plans to “do everything she could to stay.” She applied for jobs long before graduation, but hiring preferences foiled her overseas ambitions. Reactions to job interviews betrayed the same sentiment: “You’re a great candidate; if only you were European.”
Disappointed and disillusioned, Ndiwalana set her sights on returning home partly because she didn’t want to become like many of her peers who settled for positions for which they were clearly overqualified. She says many sacrificed career advancement simply for the chance to remain in the Europe or North America.
“In the West, it seems like there’s a glass ceiling—le plafond de verre—that cannot be broken,” says Chams Diagne, founder of Talent2Africa, a Dakar-based recruitment agency that specializes in bringing African talent home. “People are moving back to grow their careers faster.”
Ndiwalana became one such example. Soon after coming back to South Africa, she landed a senior marketing analytics role at Uber’s Sub-Saharan Africa division.
The reverse-migration trend has led to the rise of professional matchmaking and networking services, like Talent2Africa and others such as Movemeback and MBTN Global—both based in the UK—that pair diaspora talent with opportunities in Africa.
Regardless of talk of economic downturn, the international corporations—beyond traditional energy and commodity players—opening up in fast-growing African cities suggest a different reality on the ground. “Most western organizations are investing more in Africa because Africa is the next frontier,” Diagne says.
This has led to a notable trend where multinationals on the continent are contributing to the brain gain movement. Several of these corporates are now replacing expatriates with top talent from the diaspora, says Diagne. The companies and international NGOs usually cite reasons such as cost (paying salaries midway between a local’s and an expatriate’s), cultural ties, and security—where “repat” executives might “blend in” and speak the local language.
“There’s typically a pay cut some people need to come to terms with,” Diagne says, comparing it with what a manager or an executive might be paid in dollars or euros in New York or Paris. But while it might seems unfair, he says employers make great efforts to sweeten their offers to returnees by providing free or discounted housing, transportation, education or assistance with student loans.
“There’s a genuine sense that if you’re not going back to fix Africa, who is going to do it? There is a sense of responsibility.” One such returnee who accepted a pay cut on relocating to South Africa is Guy Kamguia, a Cameroonian-American and Harvard Business School alum. Prior to moving to South Africa in 2016, Kamguia, 32, worked as an associate with the global markets management team at Credit Suisse in New York. “I took a 20% to 30% pay cut from what I was making,” Kamguia says.
But he didn’t mind earning less because in the US he wasn’t making the kind of impact to which he aspired. Now, as as strategic business manager for Africa growth and strategy at Philafrica Foods, Kamguia is finally realizing his dream of developing manufacturing on the continent by acquiring and building food processing plants throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
“If you have an MBA, a law or medical degree, yes you’ll take a pay cut, but if you factor in the cost of living and do the math, you’re actually saving more,” he says.
Kamguia says more of his friends who were African students at business school are going back home. “There’s a genuine sense that if you’re not going back to fix Africa, who is going to do it? There is a sense of responsibility.”
That sense that there’s more to your work experience than simply earning the fattest paycheck has been well covered with millennials in western countries and it’s no different for young Africans, particularly those that seem to have the world at their feet, thanks to their world-class degrees.
“Something’s happening more generally where young people are looking for something better aligned with their internal compass,” says Oyin Solebo, co-founder of London-based Movemeback.
Since Movemeback’s launch in 2014, the company has grown to over 10,000 members, the biggest concentration of which fall between ages of 28 and 35. They have partnerships with elite internationals schools including Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge and Oxford.
Chatter about moving to Africa grows louder around graduation time, says Bradley Mensah, president of Columbia University’s African Students Association. Africans used to believe prosperity was only possible by leaving Africa for the Western countries, he says. Now, there is a “perception that prosperity is possible on the continent as well.”
For Adabara Abdullahi, founder of MBTN Global, the returnee’s motives for relocating are more nuanced depending on whether or not the returnee was born on the continent and the financial status of African-born migrants. While first-generation Western citizens of African descent are often driven by Sankofa ideals of reconnecting with their roots and elevating the continent, the story isn’t quite the same for those born on the continent.
“Most people who come to the UK or to the US from [Africa] to go to university, upon graduation, what they want to do is stay. They want to stay and they want to get some work experience here.
“The people who upon graduating want to move back are either people from really wealthy families who upon graduating, return home and join the family business,” he says, “or people who upon graduation, their student visas have run out and they’re not able to find a job that will sponsor a work visa for them, so they have no choice but to move back.”
After Nigeria’s recession, some left “because they had student loans to pay. Going from making $5,000 a month to $500 a month, overnight.” Maudo Jallow, a recent MS graduate at the London School of Economics, falls in the former group. After spending nine years abroad attending university and boarding school, the 23-year-old is happy to be back on the continent. He says his parents sent him abroad with the desire to get the “best education” and return to Gambia—not to take over the family business as such but to continue in the footsteps of his father, a UN official in Uganda.
Maudo Jallow. Happy to be back on the continent.
“Unfortunately, our institutions aren’t valued globally so to get the best education, you need to go to elite universities abroad. It’s almost fashionable,” Jallow says. But realistically, “we don’t need everybody to move back. “Move back if you have money to fall back on, an idea to implement or a tangible way to contribute.”
With Brexit, the Trump presidency and increasingly restrictive immigration policies, the trend is likely to increase, says Tomiwa Igun, founder of the Young African MBAs, a voluntary membership group. More undergrads talk about heading home after their visa work permit expires, says Igun.
“People are not willing to go through the hustle to stay in the US,” adds Zainab Raji, YAM’s Communications Lead. In recent months, Raji has also noticed more of her peers in the UK moving back. “It’s a combination of Brexit and it’s hard to get jobs.”
More people are taking the plunge knowing it’s not going to be rosy when you land. This has consequently spurred entrepreneurship and a startup culture.
Some of those entrepreneurs are returnees like Obinna Ukwuani, a Nigerian-American and MIT graduate who moved to Nigeria two years ago with the vision of building a secondary school that would give young Nigerians the technical skills to trigger a “technological and industrial revolution” in the country. Instead, he founded NESA by Makers, a Lagos-based coding academy that trains novice coders in their mid to late twenties to be employable web developers.
Ukwuani also says returnees need to a “soft landing” before moving back, which means having a variety of financial and social safety nets to cushion the impact of relocating to Africa and ease acclimatization.
Nigeria’s recession has affected the return-migration trend there. There was a migration boom up until around 2015, Ukwuani noticed. Now, the economic decline has stemmed the flow, the crash of the naira versus the dollar was particularly harmful to those who still had obligations to meet back in the US or Europe.
“I had friends who left immediately because they had student loans to pay,” Ukwuani says. “You can imagine you go from making $5000 a month to $500 a month, almost overnight.”
But even with those hurdles, he doesn’t see himself returning to the US any time soon.
“In Nigeria, I’m home. America is meant to be a paragon of democracy but it couldn’t be farther away from it,” he says referencing president Trump. “And with Brexit, people are becoming more protectionist and more xenophobic around the world. Part of me recognizes it as human nature. Now the diaspora really needs to think hard about where home is and why they are not here.”
African countries are seeing a “brain gain” as young elite graduates give up on the West
Obinna Ukwuani moved to Nigeria from the US (Ukwuani)
SHARE
WRITTEN BY
Chidinma Irene Nwoye
November 24, 2017 Quartz Africa
In July 2017, Alexandra Ndiwalana, 28, moved back to Johannesburg, South Africa after ten months of pursuing her MBA at the IE Business School in Madrid. By returning home right after her completing her studies abroad, Ndiwalana joined an emerging crop of African graduates that seem to be reversing the continent’s long-running brain drain problem. It’s a trend that offers some hope of bridging the continent’s huge skills gap.
Nearly 70% of African MBA students at the top 10 US and European schools planned to return home and work after graduation, found a survey by Jacana Partners, a pan-African private equity firm. Another study shows nine in ten African PhD students studying abroad plan to work on the continent.
Motivations behind the trend are understandable given the once promising “Africa rising” narrative and the continent being home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies.
“In the West, it seems like there’s a glass ceiling—”le plafond de verre”—that cannot be broken.” Today, however, that narrative has grown increasingly doubtful due to a downturn in the commodities boom that had driven it in the decade running up to 2015. With slowing economic growth, the longstanding lack of infrastructure, corruption and high unemployment challenges, it would be difficult to make an impact—even if you’re an expensively trained graduate from a top American or European university.
Alexandra Ndiwalana returned home to Johannesburg with an MBA from Madrid.
When Ndiwalana left her job as a management trainee at a multinational brewery and beverage company in South Africa, she went to Spain with plans to “do everything she could to stay.” She applied for jobs long before graduation, but hiring preferences foiled her overseas ambitions. Reactions to job interviews betrayed the same sentiment: “You’re a great candidate; if only you were European.”
Disappointed and disillusioned, Ndiwalana set her sights on returning home partly because she didn’t want to become like many of her peers who settled for positions for which they were clearly overqualified. She says many sacrificed career advancement simply for the chance to remain in the Europe or North America.
“In the West, it seems like there’s a glass ceiling—le plafond de verre—that cannot be broken,” says Chams Diagne, founder of Talent2Africa, a Dakar-based recruitment agency that specializes in bringing African talent home. “People are moving back to grow their careers faster.”
Ndiwalana became one such example. Soon after coming back to South Africa, she landed a senior marketing analytics role at Uber’s Sub-Saharan Africa division.
The reverse-migration trend has led to the rise of professional matchmaking and networking services, like Talent2Africa and others such as Movemeback and MBTN Global—both based in the UK—that pair diaspora talent with opportunities in Africa.
Regardless of talk of economic downturn, the international corporations—beyond traditional energy and commodity players—opening up in fast-growing African cities suggest a different reality on the ground. “Most western organizations are investing more in Africa because Africa is the next frontier,” Diagne says.
This has led to a notable trend where multinationals on the continent are contributing to the brain gain movement. Several of these corporates are now replacing expatriates with top talent from the diaspora, says Diagne. The companies and international NGOs usually cite reasons such as cost (paying salaries midway between a local’s and an expatriate’s), cultural ties, and security—where “repat” executives might “blend in” and speak the local language.
“There’s typically a pay cut some people need to come to terms with,” Diagne says, comparing it with what a manager or an executive might be paid in dollars or euros in New York or Paris. But while it might seems unfair, he says employers make great efforts to sweeten their offers to returnees by providing free or discounted housing, transportation, education or assistance with student loans.
“There’s a genuine sense that if you’re not going back to fix Africa, who is going to do it? There is a sense of responsibility.” One such returnee who accepted a pay cut on relocating to South Africa is Guy Kamguia, a Cameroonian-American and Harvard Business School alum. Prior to moving to South Africa in 2016, Kamguia, 32, worked as an associate with the global markets management team at Credit Suisse in New York. “I took a 20% to 30% pay cut from what I was making,” Kamguia says.
But he didn’t mind earning less because in the US he wasn’t making the kind of impact to which he aspired. Now, as as strategic business manager for Africa growth and strategy at Philafrica Foods, Kamguia is finally realizing his dream of developing manufacturing on the continent by acquiring and building food processing plants throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
“If you have an MBA, a law or medical degree, yes you’ll take a pay cut, but if you factor in the cost of living and do the math, you’re actually saving more,” he says.
Kamguia says more of his friends who were African students at business school are going back home. “There’s a genuine sense that if you’re not going back to fix Africa, who is going to do it? There is a sense of responsibility.”
That sense that there’s more to your work experience than simply earning the fattest paycheck has been well covered with millennials in western countries and it’s no different for young Africans, particularly those that seem to have the world at their feet, thanks to their world-class degrees.
“Something’s happening more generally where young people are looking for something better aligned with their internal compass,” says Oyin Solebo, co-founder of London-based Movemeback.
Since Movemeback’s launch in 2014, the company has grown to over 10,000 members, the biggest concentration of which fall between ages of 28 and 35. They have partnerships with elite internationals schools including Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge and Oxford.
Chatter about moving to Africa grows louder around graduation time, says Bradley Mensah, president of Columbia University’s African Students Association. Africans used to believe prosperity was only possible by leaving Africa for the Western countries, he says. Now, there is a “perception that prosperity is possible on the continent as well.”
For Adabara Abdullahi, founder of MBTN Global, the returnee’s motives for relocating are more nuanced depending on whether or not the returnee was born on the continent and the financial status of African-born migrants. While first-generation Western citizens of African descent are often driven by Sankofa ideals of reconnecting with their roots and elevating the continent, the story isn’t quite the same for those born on the continent.
“Most people who come to the UK or to the US from [Africa] to go to university, upon graduation, what they want to do is stay. They want to stay and they want to get some work experience here.
“The people who upon graduating want to move back are either people from really wealthy families who upon graduating, return home and join the family business,” he says, “or people who upon graduation, their student visas have run out and they’re not able to find a job that will sponsor a work visa for them, so they have no choice but to move back.”
After Nigeria’s recession, some left “because they had student loans to pay. Going from making $5,000 a month to $500 a month, overnight.” Maudo Jallow, a recent MS graduate at the London School of Economics, falls in the former group. After spending nine years abroad attending university and boarding school, the 23-year-old is happy to be back on the continent. He says his parents sent him abroad with the desire to get the “best education” and return to Gambia—not to take over the family business as such but to continue in the footsteps of his father, a UN official in Uganda.
Maudo Jallow. Happy to be back on the continent.
“Unfortunately, our institutions aren’t valued globally so to get the best education, you need to go to elite universities abroad. It’s almost fashionable,” Jallow says. But realistically, “we don’t need everybody to move back. “Move back if you have money to fall back on, an idea to implement or a tangible way to contribute.”
With Brexit, the Trump presidency and increasingly restrictive immigration policies, the trend is likely to increase, says Tomiwa Igun, founder of the Young African MBAs, a voluntary membership group. More undergrads talk about heading home after their visa work permit expires, says Igun.
“People are not willing to go through the hustle to stay in the US,” adds Zainab Raji, YAM’s Communications Lead. In recent months, Raji has also noticed more of her peers in the UK moving back. “It’s a combination of Brexit and it’s hard to get jobs.”
More people are taking the plunge knowing it’s not going to be rosy when you land. This has consequently spurred entrepreneurship and a startup culture.
Some of those entrepreneurs are returnees like Obinna Ukwuani, a Nigerian-American and MIT graduate who moved to Nigeria two years ago with the vision of building a secondary school that would give young Nigerians the technical skills to trigger a “technological and industrial revolution” in the country. Instead, he founded NESA by Makers, a Lagos-based coding academy that trains novice coders in their mid to late twenties to be employable web developers.
Ukwuani also says returnees need to a “soft landing” before moving back, which means having a variety of financial and social safety nets to cushion the impact of relocating to Africa and ease acclimatization.
Nigeria’s recession has affected the return-migration trend there. There was a migration boom up until around 2015, Ukwuani noticed. Now, the economic decline has stemmed the flow, the crash of the naira versus the dollar was particularly harmful to those who still had obligations to meet back in the US or Europe.
“I had friends who left immediately because they had student loans to pay,” Ukwuani says. “You can imagine you go from making $5000 a month to $500 a month, almost overnight.”
But even with those hurdles, he doesn’t see himself returning to the US any time soon.
“In Nigeria, I’m home. America is meant to be a paragon of democracy but it couldn’t be farther away from it,” he says referencing president Trump. “And with Brexit, people are becoming more protectionist and more xenophobic around the world. Part of me recognizes it as human nature. Now the diaspora really needs to think hard about where home is and why they are not here.”
Last edited:
Frangala
All Star
Edit: I highlighted the job agencies for people who always talk about working or moving to the continent. Movemeback is legit. I have met the guy (co-founder) who runs it.
Edit: The first portion highlighted further demonstrates how important family and connections are at home and bring validity to the point I was making that Africans who are really wealthy move back home because that's where they will maximize their earning potential and wealth. Those who stay here permanently most likely are not as well off instead work extra hard to achieve their status here in the States Because this seems to be the current theme among these AA vs. African threads. .
Edit: The first portion highlighted further demonstrates how important family and connections are at home and bring validity to the point I was making that Africans who are really wealthy move back home because that's where they will maximize their earning potential and wealth. Those who stay here permanently most likely are not as well off instead work extra hard to achieve their status here in the States Because this seems to be the current theme among these AA vs. African threads. .
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
WATCH CAMEROON! THINGS MAY GET HOT
Kenyatta sworn in for second term as Kenya's president amid protests
Three people reported killed as police break up opposition rally a few miles away from inauguration ceremony in Nairobi
Police clash with an opposition supporter during demonstrations in Nairobi against the inauguration of Uhuru Kenyatta. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images
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Jason Burke and agencies
Tuesday 28 November 2017 10.49 ESTLast modified on Tuesday 28 November 2017 12.16 EST
Uhuru Kenyatta has been sworn in for a second five-year term as president of Kenya in a colourful ceremony that few believe will signal the end of political instability in the east African country.
Kenyatta, 56, won a rerun presidential election last month boycotted by the opposition, which said it would not be free and fair.
As the president appeared before the 60,000-strong crowd in Nairobi’s Kasarani stadium for the inauguration, at least three people were reported killed as police fired rifles and teargas to break up supporters gathered a few miles away to hear Raila Odinga, the main opposition leader.
Odinga, 75, spoke briefly before being forced into a car by volleys of teargas from police. He told the crowd he would be “sworn in as president” by his own supporters later this month and called Kenyatta’s government “illegitimate”.
Video footage shows the crowd fleeing amid the sound of gunfire, and helmeted security forces striking unarmed people with batons. Other people scooped up water from slum puddles to clean their eyes.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Opposition leader Raila Odinga addresses his supporters during demonstrations in the Umoja suburb of Nairobi. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images
The political turmoil in east Africa’s richest and most developed economy was triggered when Kenya’s supreme court nullified the first presidential election in August over irregularities. Turnout in the rerun was only 39%. Kenyatta won with a crushing majority.
The supreme court was again asked to dismiss the result, but this time upheld Kenyatta’s victory.
Supporters wearing the red and yellow of the ruling Jubilee party, many carrying Kenyan flags, filled the stadium terraces and cheered wildly as the incumbent president was sworn into office and as he received a 21-gun salute.
Thousands of others waited outside. Some overwhelmed police and streamed in. Officers were forced to fire teargas to control them.
“I … do swear … that I will always truly and diligently serve the people of the Republic of Kenya,” Kenyatta said with his hand on a Bible that had been used to swear in his father, founding president Jomo Kenyatta, at independence in 1963.
Kenyatta, a US-educated multimillionaire, said the past few months “have been a trying time”, and he called for an end to hate and divisiveness.
“The elections are now firmly behind us … I will devote my time and energy to build bridges.”
He again criticised the supreme court’s nullification of his August election win, saying that “despite ... being told that the processes matter more than your vote, we complied.”
But he added that the court, whose justices he once called “crooks” for their ruling, acted with independence, and he said recent events showed that “our constitution is no piece of paper”. Institutions should not be destroyed whenever they don’t deliver the desired results, he added.
The ceremony was attended by heads of state from across east Africa.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Uhuru Kenyatta waves after his arrival to take oath of office at Kasarani stadium in Nairobi. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who is on a visit to Kenya, pulled out of the ceremony over “security concerns”.
Supporters of Kenyatta said they wanted the opposition to engage in talks and move on. “I’m sure Uhuru will be able to bring people together and unite them so we can all work for the country,” said Eunice Jerobon, a trader who travelled overnight from the Rift Valley town of Kapsabet for the inauguration.
Kenya is more polarised and divided that at any time since ethnic violence killed more than a thousand people in 2008, observers say.
The former British colony is a patchwork of dozens of ethnic groups where political competition for resources often exacerbates existing ill-feeling between communities.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Opposition supporters clash with police in the Jacaranda grounds quarter in Nairobi. Photograph: Khalil Senosi/AP
Odinga’s supporters, many drawn from poorer parts of the country, believe they have been marginalised for decades. They accuse the ruling party of stealing the election, rampant corruption, directing abuse by the security forces and neglecting vast swaths of the country, including Odinga’s heartland in the west.
“A return to the political backwardness of our past is more than unacceptable. It is intolerable. This divide cannot be bridged by dialogue and compromise,” Odinga’s National Super Alliance said in a statement.
However, analysts say the opposition is running low on funds and has lost access to political power through the crisis. “There is not much the opposition can really do. People get tired of going on the streets and physically putting their lives on the line. It feels as if we have reached something of a full stop,” said Rebekka Rumpel, a Kenya expert at Chatham House in London.
Thoughts are turning to the next elections, which Kenyatta cannot contest. “The underlying causes have not gone away. The next period will be marked by high-level jockeying for position for 2022,” Rumpel said.
Kenyatta was educated at a private school in Nairobi and at Amherst College in the US, and is regarded as a leader of the Kikuyu people, the country’s single largest ethnic group.
He is married with three children and regularly attends Catholic church. In 2011, Forbes magazine estimated Kenyatta’s wealth at $500m (€423m).
Kenyatta’s first term was defined by big spending on eye-catching infrastructure and impressive economic growth in a tough climate. But this has gone hand-in-hand with spiralling debt and widening inequality.
Terrorism has also been a consistent threat, with Kenyatta forced to address the nation after bloody attacks in 2013 and 2015.
Three people reported killed as police break up opposition rally a few miles away from inauguration ceremony in Nairobi
Police clash with an opposition supporter during demonstrations in Nairobi against the inauguration of Uhuru Kenyatta. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images
Shares
23
Jason Burke and agencies
Tuesday 28 November 2017 10.49 ESTLast modified on Tuesday 28 November 2017 12.16 EST
Uhuru Kenyatta has been sworn in for a second five-year term as president of Kenya in a colourful ceremony that few believe will signal the end of political instability in the east African country.
Kenyatta, 56, won a rerun presidential election last month boycotted by the opposition, which said it would not be free and fair.
As the president appeared before the 60,000-strong crowd in Nairobi’s Kasarani stadium for the inauguration, at least three people were reported killed as police fired rifles and teargas to break up supporters gathered a few miles away to hear Raila Odinga, the main opposition leader.
Odinga, 75, spoke briefly before being forced into a car by volleys of teargas from police. He told the crowd he would be “sworn in as president” by his own supporters later this month and called Kenyatta’s government “illegitimate”.
Video footage shows the crowd fleeing amid the sound of gunfire, and helmeted security forces striking unarmed people with batons. Other people scooped up water from slum puddles to clean their eyes.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Opposition leader Raila Odinga addresses his supporters during demonstrations in the Umoja suburb of Nairobi. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images
The political turmoil in east Africa’s richest and most developed economy was triggered when Kenya’s supreme court nullified the first presidential election in August over irregularities. Turnout in the rerun was only 39%. Kenyatta won with a crushing majority.
The supreme court was again asked to dismiss the result, but this time upheld Kenyatta’s victory.
Supporters wearing the red and yellow of the ruling Jubilee party, many carrying Kenyan flags, filled the stadium terraces and cheered wildly as the incumbent president was sworn into office and as he received a 21-gun salute.
Thousands of others waited outside. Some overwhelmed police and streamed in. Officers were forced to fire teargas to control them.
“I … do swear … that I will always truly and diligently serve the people of the Republic of Kenya,” Kenyatta said with his hand on a Bible that had been used to swear in his father, founding president Jomo Kenyatta, at independence in 1963.
Kenyatta, a US-educated multimillionaire, said the past few months “have been a trying time”, and he called for an end to hate and divisiveness.
“The elections are now firmly behind us … I will devote my time and energy to build bridges.”
He again criticised the supreme court’s nullification of his August election win, saying that “despite ... being told that the processes matter more than your vote, we complied.”
But he added that the court, whose justices he once called “crooks” for their ruling, acted with independence, and he said recent events showed that “our constitution is no piece of paper”. Institutions should not be destroyed whenever they don’t deliver the desired results, he added.
The ceremony was attended by heads of state from across east Africa.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Uhuru Kenyatta waves after his arrival to take oath of office at Kasarani stadium in Nairobi. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who is on a visit to Kenya, pulled out of the ceremony over “security concerns”.
Supporters of Kenyatta said they wanted the opposition to engage in talks and move on. “I’m sure Uhuru will be able to bring people together and unite them so we can all work for the country,” said Eunice Jerobon, a trader who travelled overnight from the Rift Valley town of Kapsabet for the inauguration.
Kenya is more polarised and divided that at any time since ethnic violence killed more than a thousand people in 2008, observers say.
The former British colony is a patchwork of dozens of ethnic groups where political competition for resources often exacerbates existing ill-feeling between communities.
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Opposition supporters clash with police in the Jacaranda grounds quarter in Nairobi. Photograph: Khalil Senosi/AP
Odinga’s supporters, many drawn from poorer parts of the country, believe they have been marginalised for decades. They accuse the ruling party of stealing the election, rampant corruption, directing abuse by the security forces and neglecting vast swaths of the country, including Odinga’s heartland in the west.
“A return to the political backwardness of our past is more than unacceptable. It is intolerable. This divide cannot be bridged by dialogue and compromise,” Odinga’s National Super Alliance said in a statement.
However, analysts say the opposition is running low on funds and has lost access to political power through the crisis. “There is not much the opposition can really do. People get tired of going on the streets and physically putting their lives on the line. It feels as if we have reached something of a full stop,” said Rebekka Rumpel, a Kenya expert at Chatham House in London.
Thoughts are turning to the next elections, which Kenyatta cannot contest. “The underlying causes have not gone away. The next period will be marked by high-level jockeying for position for 2022,” Rumpel said.
Kenyatta was educated at a private school in Nairobi and at Amherst College in the US, and is regarded as a leader of the Kikuyu people, the country’s single largest ethnic group.
He is married with three children and regularly attends Catholic church. In 2011, Forbes magazine estimated Kenyatta’s wealth at $500m (€423m).
Kenyatta’s first term was defined by big spending on eye-catching infrastructure and impressive economic growth in a tough climate. But this has gone hand-in-hand with spiralling debt and widening inequality.
Terrorism has also been a consistent threat, with Kenyatta forced to address the nation after bloody attacks in 2013 and 2015.
The Singularity
Pro
The pictures in this article are quite misleading. Nairobi was calm, everything is normal today.
