#FRONTROW: Meet the people changing the world

Barack Obama doesn’t show up in public much these days, so when the former US president was announced as a keynote speaker at the Goalkeepers event in New York hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it promised to be extra special.

An hour before he took to the stage, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke eloquently about why he is a feminist and his impressive work on gender equality around the world.

His cabinet is 50 per cent female and his country has pledged a substantial amount of its foreign aid to supporting women’s rights organisations around the world.

Two years after I interviewed her in London, Oxford-bound Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai reminded the audience why she is one of the world’s strongest advocates for girls’ education. “I believe that every girl can go to school in our lifetime,” she said. “If one girl with an education can change the world, what can 130 million do?”

At Gotham Hall next to Central Park, a dizzying galaxy of boldface names addressed the world’s most pressing challenges. Introduced to an a capella version of Englishman in New York, the actor activist comedian Stephen Fry quickly declared that he was actually Welsh before delivering a brain dump on technology with a purpose.

Later, another funny man, Trevor Noah, used his mixed-race childhood in apartheid South Africa to set up why everyone should get involved in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

With nationalist movements gaining traction in the West, the ever-expanding refugee crisis, natural disasters and the inexplicable denial of climate change as well as everything else broken in the world, everyone with a voice must contribute to preserve our current way of life.

Consider the uplifting story of how Internet stars Casey Neistat, Jerome Jarre and Juanpa Zurita convinced Turkish Airlines to give them a cargo plane, which they filled with supplies for a starving population. Or the incredible work of Liberian Indian American physician and social entrepreneur Raj Panjabi, 36, in providing healthcare to some of the continent’s most remote communities.

Or even the initiative to teach 1 million young girls and women how to code by 2030, which earned Senegalese techpreneur Mariéme Jamme the Goalkeepers 2017 Innovation Award.

The world is getting better in some ways thanks to deliberate efforts by entrepreneurs like Bill Gates using their fortunes to reshape our lives.

“In the 21st century, one of the best anti-poverty programmes is a world-class education,” Obama told the gathering. A Chicago community organiser who rose to become president of the United States can say that but what about the fractured nation he left behind? He decried the dearth of common sense in American politics, using such words as “frustrating” and “aggravating” that his predecessor is keen on repealing every achievement his administration made on such critical areas as healthcare and climate change.

“When I see people trying to undo that hard-won progress — for the 50th or 60th time — it is aggravating. And all of this being done without any demonstrable economic or actuarial or plain common sense rationale, it frustrates.”

They instantly became controversial because they were seen as another direct attack on his successor, Donald Tump.

So divided is the political discourse in America — and in Kenya —that people can no longer agree on what should be an incontestable fact. Considering the intractable problems we face around the globe, it is disheartening that we’re held back by often petty differences that shouldn’t even matter in the grand scale of things.

Instead, we should all by rallying behind the people brave enough to imagine a more inclusive world such as Bina Maseno running for office in a male-dominated Kenyan political field, or Congelese gynaecologist Dr Denis Mukwege treating women gang-raped by rebel forces. These are important causes that don’t get as much play as the latest tweetstorm in a news cycle run by the latest outrage rather than what deserves careful consideration.

Goalkeepers was billed as bringing together “a generation of determined thinkers, doers and givers, sharing their work and ideas to help hit the ambitious Global Goals target by 2030” and it lived up to the expectations.

If completed, the September 2015 deal 193 countries agreed to would see an end to “extreme poverty, inequality and climate change”.

There’s something refreshing about seeing Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa sitting quietly in the audience alongside Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, all considering how to hit those 17 targets.

The people changing the world in the most meaningful ways are not the self-important politicians or the talking heads on TV; they are those working in our communities with what they have. Like Obama said at the end of his term, the most important office is that of citizen.

*****

FEEDBACK: on plans to ban matatus from the CBD

INADEQUARE TERMINII: Larry, the plan to decongest the city is not a piss in the wind. The “how to” is. The 11 terminii are too few to accommodate the huge number of matatus and buses, considering that some routes have several Saccos managing the fleets.
The genius of banning the matatus from our Mother City clearly has no strategies to serve in the long and acts on the spur of the moment a few weeks after being sworn into office. The matatu sector has many stakeholders and interested parties. Including them in decision making might be helpful in solving the bigger problem and not making commuting on PSVs strenuous.

Anne Maina

MULTIPRONGED APPROACH: Larry, The transport problems in Nairobi cannot be blamed on the 14-seater matatus or the public transport system.  To solve the transport problem, you have to solve the problems associated with the service delivery, in this case health, education and markets. The major problem in Nairobi is the centralisation of services. Decentralising and improving these key areas could greatly reduce traffic while solving the problem in the areas. 

Education: It is a fact that when schools close the traffic in the city reduces. It is also a fact that a number of students go to school across the town (e.g from Thika Road to Langata Road).  Besides, the schools run by the county are few and neither well-funded nor well-equipped. The solution lies in building and equipping more schools. It is disturbing to see students waiting at bus stops at 5am so that they can make it to school on time.  The number of universities in town is worrying. The students in these universities do not have facilities to rest, play or study. The only place they can rest is either in a bar or hotel. A good example is the student who stands all day near the National Archives. Why do we have universities without facilities in town? 

HEALTH: The starting point would be to get the statistics of the people who seek treatment at the Kenyatta National Hospital as well as those who visit or accompany the sick. The problem is that Kenyatta hospital attracts patient not only from Nairobi, but also from around the country. So it would be important to equip county hospitals in the estates to reduce traffic to Kenyatta hospital.

MARKETS: Gikomba is arguably the largest market in Kenya. The number of Nairobi residents going to Gikomba is extremely large. The ecosystem of the market involves the transporters, trader and buyer, who account for a large percentage of Nairobi commuters.

The solution would be to build modern markets along the major highways to reduce over-reliance on Gikomba.

Albert Mwenda
(L-R) Former US President Barack Obama answers questions with Melinda and Bill Gates at the Gates Foundation Inaugural Goalkeepers event on September 20, 2017, in New York City.

Send your comments to Larry Madowo at [email protected]