Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - PRESIDENT OBAMA & THE YALI

Dear Yusuf Bangura:

I was privileged to be a member of the panel that reviewed the applications for the inaugural President Barak Obama's Young African Leaders Initiative fellowship. Therefore, I can claim to know a thing or two about the fellowship and the process by which the fellows were chosen.

Contrary to your insinuations, each of the nearly 100 panelists reviewed about 40 applications from one country divided into the following categories of applicants:

Business and Entrepreneurship: aspiring entrepreneurs who hope to take on leadership roles within the private sector or start their own business ventures on the continent.

Civic Leadership: young Africans who are civically engaged and serve the public through non-governmental organizations, and/or volunteer or community-based organizations.

Public Management: young Africans who work or aspire to work in all levels of government, regional organizations such as the African Union, international bodies such as the United Nations, or other publicly-minded entities or think tanks.

Following their three-day July 2014 summit/meeting with Pres. Obama in Washington, DC, these leaders will attend U.S. universities for a six-week academic institute in one of three areas: business and entrepreneurship; civic leadership; and public management. Coursework and training in each of these sectors will focus on the skills these young African leaders need to run better ministries, start and grow businesses, and serve their communities.

Thereafter, about 100 Fellows will participate in high-level eight-week professional development experiences or internships at U.S. businesses, non-profits, NGOs, and government offices. 

The jury is still out on Obama's Africa policy, but I can assure you that the US Embassy in Freetown indeed considered "class-economic status--school grades" and actually had applicants write "a composition where they opine about the political problems and solutions before making their selections." You could also easily have visited their website for more information about the program before launching your needless attack against Pres. Obama. There are lots of problems in Sierra Leone you could think of solving. Start small and don't wait for Obama and the African blood in his veins.

Peace as always! 

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 2:18 PM, william bangura <william.bangura17@gmail.com> wrote:

I am not privy to the selection process to the Young Africans Leaders Initiative (YALI) but most of them were well-fed and are not a reflection of the socio-economic and political groups of sub-Saharan Africa.

I would have preferred that YALI included kids between the ages of 15 and 17 and recent university graduates. Referencing my paternal country Sierra Leone majority of those between the ages of 25 to 35 had already been corrupted socio-economically and politically.

I am uncertain about the amount of YALI's per country, but I would have preferred that there is a representative each for the social, economical and political components.

The political component should have been represented from one of the schools in Freetown, Sierra Leone who is from a family of five, whose father is a custodian who either works at the Connaught Hospital, is a trash collector for the Ministry of Health or a laborer for the Public Works Department and whose mother is a housewife, and they are both uneducated. Because of his dad's salary they live in a two bedroom tin-shack, with no electricity and they procure water from the street tap, and they can only eat dinner once a day and not throughout each month.

But this YALI is very obedient, diligent and respectful at home and at school, is always in the top five in each class and is also very politically conscious.

He continuously visits the rural areas to be in contact with his matrilineal and patrilineal relatives who are from different provinces and also toils in the agricultural sector to procure some revenues to pay for his school fees, buy books, uniforms, and shoes, and buy lunch.

The US Embassy in Freetown should have considered class—economic status—school grades, and they should have penned a composition where they opine about the political problems and solutions before making their selections.

Inviting entrepreneurs between the ages of 25 and 35 is a novel idea, but without the "socio-political" there will never be a viable economical state.

To quote the latte President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, " Seek ye first a political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you."

As is prevalent with President Obama he has done more for Arabs and Europeans than the sub-Africans whose blood he has "running through his veins."

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Okey Iheduru, PhD
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.

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