PM hails American youth

Written By:PMPS,    Posted: Sun, Apr 29, 2012

The PM challenged young people to know that change never comes easy Prime Minister Raila Odinga Saturday paid tribute to America's youth  for their campaign that put President Barack Obama in the White House in 2008. He said the youth-driven campaign set a trend that could see young people create the changes they want across the world in the coming years. Odinga said the energetic campaign by America's young people inspired the younger generation across the world, and expressed hope that their example will be taken up in Kenya in the coming election. Addressing a graduation ceremony at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, in Tallahassee, Florida, Odinga said that Kenyans keenly followed the campaign and election of President Barrack Obama in 2008, they hoped that President Obama would win and celebrated his victory. The PM however said Kenyans did not sympathise with President Obama just because of his Kenyan roots. "Kenyans were inspired by his message of hope and change. Young Kenyans were awed by the energy and activism of their American counterparts. They saw young people apply their power and have their way. And the young Kenyans promised themselves that next time, in the elections we are set to hold, it would be their turn," Odinga said. He said the 2008 US elections will have long lasting positive ramifications across the world adding that it was already inspiring an unstoppable wind of democracy across Africa and beyond. If the trend continues, it will end the vice of negative ethnicity and racism and lead to more accountable leadership across the world. At the graduation ceremony, the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University conferred a doctorate on Odinga citing his push for a new constitution and its implementation, the struggle for justice, freedom and civil rights and his role as Prime Minister. The PM challenged young people to know that change never comes easy. He cited the continuing mistrust among the races in the US many years after the civil war as indication that change takes long to come and has to be fought for daily. "Here in Florida, even half a century after the Civil Rights Movement, the ghost of racism refuses to give way," the PM said. "Half a century after my late father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was detained in Atlanta together with Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Rev Jesse Jackson; Ambassador Andrew Young, Mr. Raph Abernathy and other Civil Rights leaders for what was declared as unlawful assembly, extracting justice and opportunity still seem to require a struggle." He cited the recent shooting to death of a young African American Trayvon Martin, in a neighbourhood in Florida and the reluctance by police to arrest the killer, as indication that racial suspicion persists in America. Odinga said he took the honorary doctorate conferred on him as a "the triumph of the will of the Kenyan people, the battles we have fought together and the many more we are yet to face." Florida A&M was instrumental in developing the Egerton Agricultural College in the 1970s and 1980s. It has begun a relationship with the Ramogi Institute of Advanced Technology (RIAT) in Kisumu County. The PM called for the strengthening of educational ties between Kenya and the US saying such collaboration in the past produced very positive results. He said the airlifts initiated by J.F. Kennedy and Tom Mboya produced leaders like the late Prof Wangari Mathaai, Africa's first Nobel laureate and one of a few female Nobel laureates in the world.  He challenged the young graduates to think of pursuing careers in Africa which he said needs the scientific knowledge to advance agriculture, produce clean energy and conserve the environment.  The PM challenged the academia to demystify biotechnology so that it becomes a source of food for the hungry instead of myths and fears. He asked academicians to device ways of making green energy cheaper and commercially viable and to inspire confidence in nuclear as a safe source of power once again.