At the G-8, Obama Gets Personal About Poverty

One of the real accomplishments here at the G-8 was the announcement that participating countries would contribute $20 billion toward global food security. Administration officials initially estimated they would only get $15 billion in commitments but Obama pushed the issue heavily. At a meeting this morning with the leaders of Nigeria, Libya, Ethiopia and several other African countries, Obama, talked about his own family’s experience with Africa and poverty. “Everyone knows his father is from Kenya, that he still has relatives living in poverty, and that while he’s president of the United States, he feels poverty in a very personal way because of this of his family situation,” a senior administration official told reporters. In part, Obama talked about Kenya’s decline from the days when his father lived there, and it was an economy doing better than South Korea, to now, where family members who remain there struggle. “His cousin in Kenya can’t find a job without paying a bribe,” the official said. The president’s audience was riveted. “You could hear a pin drop,” the aide said.

Obama was asked about the story at the presser today, and in his own words, he explained what he had told other foreign leaders.  “My father traveled to the United States a mere 50 years ago and yet now I have family members who live in villages,” Obama said. “They themselves are not going hungry, but live in villages where hunger is real.  And so this is something that I understand in very personal terms, and if you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that part of the issue here is the institutions aren't working for ordinary people.  And so governance is a vital concern that has to be addressed.”

After the jump is Obama’s full answer, courtesy the White House:

THE PRESIDENT:  What you heard is true, and I started with this fairly telling point that when my father traveled to the United States from Kenya to study, at that time the per capita income and Gross Domestic Product of Kenya was higher than South Korea's.  Today obviously South Korea is a highly developed and relatively wealthy country, and Kenya is still struggling with deep poverty in much of the country.  And the question I asked in the meeting was, why is that?  There had been some talk about the legacies of colonialism and other policies by wealthier nations, and without in any way diminishing that history, the point I made was that the South Korean government, working with the private sector and civil society, was able to create a set of institutions that provided transparency and accountability and efficiency that allowed for extraordinary economic progress, and that there was no reason why African countries could not do the same.  And yet, in many African countries, if you want to start a business or get a job you still have to pay a bribe; that there remains too much -- there remains a lack of transparency.
 
And the point that I was trying to underscore is, is that as we think about this issue of food security, which is of tremendous importance -- I mean, we've got 100 million people who dropped into further dire poverty as a consequence of this recession; we estimate that a billion people are hungry around the globe.  And so wealthier nations have a moral obligation as well as a national security interest in providing assistance.  And we've got to meet those responsibilities.  The flip side is, is that countries in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the world that are suffering from extreme poverty have an obligation to use the assistance that's available in a way that is transparent, accountable, and that builds on rule of law and other institutional reforms that will allow long-term improvement. 

There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food.  It has sufficient arable land.  What's lacking is the right seeds, the right irrigation, but also the kinds of institutional mechanisms that ensure that a farmer is going to be able to grow crops, get them to market, get a fair price.  And so all these things have to be part of a comprehensive plan, and that's what I was trying to underscore during the meeting today.
 
Q    And your own family, sir?
 
THE PRESIDENT:  What's that?
 
Q    Your own family?
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Well, the point I was making is -- my father traveled to the United States a mere 50 years ago and yet now I have family members who live in villages -- they themselves are not going hungry, but live in villages where hunger is real.  And so this is something that I understand in very personal terms, and if you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that part of the issue here is the institutions aren't working for ordinary people.  And so governance is a vital concern that has to be addressed.
 
Now keep in mind -- I want to be very careful -- Africa is a continent, not a country, and so you can't extrapolate from the experience of one country.  And there are a lot of good things happening.  Part of the reason that we're traveling to Ghana is because you've got there a functioning democracy, a President who's serious about reducing corruption, and you've seen significant economic growth. So I don't want to overly generalize it, but I do want to make the broader point that a government that is stable, that is not engaging in tribal conflicts, that can give people confidence and security that their work will be rewarded, that is investing in its people and their skills and talents, those countries can succeed, regardless of their history