Uhuru brought cowboy boots and a stetson from America, if nothing else
What you need to know:
- One bulletin promoted the White House dinner and photo-opportunity and the actual summit as if they were private meetings between President Kenyatta and President Obama where substantial business was discussed one-on-one.
- Since Obama did not quite dish out the dollars, perhaps an evaluation will have to wait till there are concrete developments from any deals the private corporate bosses might seal in coming days.
Veni, Vidi, Vici? All of the 50-odd African leaders who travelled to the United States can say with satisfaction they went and they saw, but how many can claim they conquered?
Besides the obligatory production-line photo-ops with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle, the meet-and-greet events, the shopping sprees and the open-mouthed gawking, the jury is still out on whether there were any tangible gains.
Other than the chilled spiced tomato soup opener onto the main dish of grilled dry-aged beef and the cappuccino fudge cake dessert put together by the White House chef, all washed down with generous helpings of Black Cote Sauvignon Blanc 2013, Visions Cellars Pinot Noir 2010 and Thibaut-Janisson Brut, it is unclear whether the African leaders will take home any abiding memories.
It probably is instructive that in Kenya, for instance, debate on the US visit was dominated, not by its importance for the country, but by what it means for President Uhuru Kenyatta against his political nemesis Raila Odinga.
On that great barometer of the ages, social media, Jubilee establishment warriors who were used to dismissing President Obama and the US in general as inconsequential, were suddenly smitten with fervour. The trip was taken as a great victory for President Kenyatta and an indication that the White House had eaten humble-pie in recognising a leader it had warned Kenyans against electing.
A PRIVATE MEETING
President Kenyatta’s Facebook and Twitter battalions aside, even the official presidential communications outfit felt constrained to put out rather exaggerated accounts of the visit.
One bulletin promoted the White House dinner and photo-opportunity and the actual summit as if they were private meetings between President Kenyatta and President Obama where substantial business was discussed one-on-one.
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, but the spin was very much like that adopted by Mr Odinga’s own publicity machine when the then Prime Minister visited the US in 2009.
Mr Odinga had gone to represent President Kibaki at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and his acolytes in some newspapers were used to weave tall tales of him being granted a private meeting with President Obama.
When some media doubted the reports of a private meeting, one newspaper that had taken the lead in the exaggerated reports published a photograph of President Obama and Michelle posing with Mr Odinga and his wife Ida, under the gleeful headline ‘Who’s fooling who?’
The piece went on to describe in breathless detail accounts of Mr Odinga’s ‘private’ meeting and dinner with Obama, going further to excoriate other local publications that had doubted the version.
SOCIAL MEDIA BRIGADES
It turned out, however, that the dinner involved upwards of 100 heads of delegation who attended the UN parley, and the photograph used to prove accounts of a private meeting was another smile and pose photo session involving more than twice the number of leaders who queued up with President Kenyatta last week.
The interesting thing is that while Mr Odinga’s supporters in 2009 were ecstatic over the Obama photo-op, this time his social media brigades came out dismissive of such an event, generally taking the view that President Kenyatta was just in a line-up involving 50 other leaders and merited no special recognition.
The Kenyatta and Odinga social media mouthpieces were going full throttle at each other over the significance, or otherwise, of the US junket, but in the meantime, little thought has been given to more substantial issues around the trip.
Since Obama did not quite dish out the dollars, perhaps an evaluation will have to wait till there are concrete developments from any deals the private corporate bosses might seal in coming days.
Meanwhile, there at least was a valuable take home for President Kenyatta, who left a luncheon in Dallas with the gifts of a cowboy hat and boots. His hosts in the Dallas business community were obviously well-briefed that our president comes from a part of the country where all things cowboy, particularly Stetsons and country music, are really treasured.
[email protected] Twitter: @MachariaGaitho
