{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Bibi comes to town, and hey presto, we all fall down - Comment
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Bibi comes to town, and hey presto, we all fall down
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Uganda and Kenya mid-week, on an Africa tour that also covered Rwanda and Ethiopia.
There is the politics of the trip, which needs a small book to itself. And then there was the traffic. In Nairobi, the traffic jams were so horrible, even Netanyahu jokingly apologised for being the cause.
When US President Barack Obama visited Kenya last year, there was a total lockdown. People didn't bother, and just stayed home. On an earlier Obama trip to Senegal, the capital Dakar was shuttered, and several small traders are reported to have gone out of business or hit rock bottom.
However, when an African leader visits Kampala or Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, or any other African city, they sometimes don't make even lead items on TV or the cover pages of the newspapers.
In an age when African leaders are more outspoken and thumping their chests louder about being their own men and women, it is when people like Obama and Netanyahu drop in that the empty bravado of it all is revealed.
Even Netanyahu was able to gather a handful of regional leaders for a regional summit in Uganda. The Chinese have their Forum of China-Africa Co-operation. They herd together more leaders at FOCAC than attend the African Union summit.
India also summoned them and they pitched up. Japan also collects them, as do the Americans.
The thing is that you will be hard pressed to notice as a New Yorker, for example, that 50 African leaders, let alone one, are in town. Even if all the 54 African leaders were assembled in Washington DC and were headed to a White House dinner with Obama, no part of the American capital would be closed down.
What is happening? It seems that, first, it is a statement about African nations' State capacity. There seems to be an acknowledgement that the only way a Netanyahu or Obama can be kept safe in Africa, is to keep nearly everyone as far away from them as possible. We do not have the ability to ensure their safety with many people in close proximity.
But the second, and perhaps more troubling thing, is that the premium on an Obama visiting has shot up sharply in Africa in recent years. A world leader from a rich nation is no longer just a visitor. He is an event, the minor equivalent of holding a World Cup or Olympics.
The visit is often touted as opening a big door to tourism, investment, and conferring magical diplomatic capital.
One valid reason for this is that today every country competes with the rest of the world for investment. It is no longer just Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda against each other.
However, African governance on the whole has degenerated, and there are hardly any leaders on the continent with the star power to wow the world.
Most of them need the validation and the celebrity dust of a Xi Jinping or Obama to be taken seriously.
The day an African president visits the US or Israel, and it is declared a public holiday and half the city lines the road from the airport waving flags, you will know our moment has finally arrived.
Until then, though, some pride please.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs.Twitter@cobbo3
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