Barack Obama, Son of Africa

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There has been much brouhaha over the phrase “Kenyan-born” applied to Barack Obama by a Nairobi, Kenya, newspaper back in 2004. But long before that, birthers were looking at phrases from Kenyan officials using phrases like “son of the soil” as conclusive proof that at least they know the President was born in Kenya, and indeed, so the birthers say, everyone in Kenya knows this. And truly, even born in the United States, Barack Obama was a dual Kenyan-American citizen for two decades.

This article is about news coverage (much from Africa) of Barack Obama–what they said, and the language they used. I offer my thanks to one of the visitors here for the research used in this article.

In my previous article, Obama Uncle Confirms – not born in Kenya, I presented a video of the President’s uncle Sayid Obama describing the President’s first visit to Kenya as an adult. These close family members know that literally President Obama was not born in the country of Kenya. His step grandmother said:

“When he came for the first time, it was to see the grave of his father and I was very pleased because, for someone who was born over there and spent all his time over there, it was impressive to see him identify so much with this place,” she says in Luo, the language of her tribe.
—  “Kenyan village greets rise of local son Obama”, The Irish Times, November 4, 2004

In what follows, you will get the flavor of how Africans and others talk about Obama’s relationship to Africa in the language of metaphor and feeling. On occasion, the newspaper gets it wrong, saying Obama was born in Kenya.

Africa News
January 19, 2004 Monday
Kenya; Kenyan in US Senate Race
BYLINE: The East African Standard

An American of Kenyan descent is topping the opinion polls in the race for Senator in the state of Illinois.
… Obama, whose father came from Ndori, Siaya District, is giving the current Senator, Mr Peter G Fitzgerald, quite a run for his money.
… Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii, where his father, Barack Obama, had gone to study in 1959.

Africa News
January 22, 2004 Thursday
Kenya; Siaya Ecstatic Over Would-Be Illinois Senator
BYLINE: The East African Standard

Following the East African Standard exclusive of the American of Kenyan descent who is gunning for Senator in Illinois, USA, Mr Barack Obama is today tied in first place for the powerful position.
We have also established that Obama promised to come back home and build a simba (a traditional Luo grass-thatched hut) in his father’s Siaya home.
… When the East African Standard team visited the home this week, the village was beside itself with excitement that “one of their own” – in typical Kenyan parlance – was about to join the list of Who is Who in the politics of the world’s only super power.
… News that Obama is topping the opinion polls in the race for US senator has brought excitement to his father’s Kogelo village in Siaya.
… As word that Obama is in the race for Senator spread in the village and the neighbouring areas, most people were heard wondering aloud: Wuod Kogelo dwaro golo Bush e kom (A son of Kogelo clan is challenging President George Bush for presidency in America).

Africa News
April 2, 2004 Friday
Kenya; Readers Swallow Obama Prank
BYLINE: The East African Standard

… Reports that the American of Kenyan descent in the race to clinch a seat in the US senate, Mr Barrack Obama, was jetting home to meet supporters and build a Simba – a traditional Luo grass-thatched hut – in his father’s home, deceived many.
… Anxious residents, longing to see their “son”, made arrangements to move to the Nyangoma Kogelo village for a grand reception.

The Observer
August 8, 2004
Vision of black pioneer offers Africans hop: Hero cites Kenyan roots in battle for the US Senate
BYLINE: Jeevan Vasagar
SECTION: Observer News Pages, Pg. 24

IT IS rare for a politician to be so feted in Africa. Young, good-looking and articulate, the rising political star whose name means ‘blessed’ in Swahili has become a symbol of hope for the continent.
Yet he is not an African. Barack Obama, whose father is Kenyan, is in fact running for election in America where he is favourite to become the country’s only African-American senator in November.
… Africans hope a half-Kenyan senator will encourage US policymakers to pay closer attention to the continent. A powerful domestic motivation underlying US concern over the slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan has been the desire to appeal to African-American voters in an election year.

The New York Times
August 29, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition – Final
‘African-American’ Becomes a Term for Debate
BYLINE: By RACHEL L. SWARNS
SECTION: Section 1; Column 2; National Desk; Pg. 1
DATELINE: SILVER SPRING, Md., Aug. 27

This month, the debate spilled into public view when Alan Keyes, the black Republican challenger for the Senate seat in Illinois, questioned whether Mr. Obama, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, should claim an African-American identity.

”Barack Obama claims an African-American heritage,” Mr. Keyes said on the ABC program ”This Week” with George Stephanopoulos. ”Barack Obama and I have the same race — that is, physical characteristics. We are not from the same heritage.”

”My ancestors toiled in slavery in this country,” Mr. Keyes said. ”My consciousness, who I am as a person, has been shaped by my struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage.”

Some black Americans argue that black immigrants, like Mr. Kamus, and the children of immigrants, like Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell, are most certainly African-American. (Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell often use that term when describing themselves.) Yet some immigrants and their children prefer to be called African or Nigerian-American or Jamaican-American, depending on their countries of origin. Other people prefer the term black, which seems to include everyone, regardless of nationality.

… ”For me the term African-American really does fit,” said Mr. Obama, 43. ”I’m African, I trace half of my heritage to Africa directly and I’m American.”

The New York Times
October 25, 2004 Monday
Late Edition – Final
Illinois Democrat Wins Kenyan Hearts, in a Landslide
BYLINE: By MARC LACEY
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Foreign Desk; Nyang’oma Journal; Pg. 4
DATELINE: NYANG’OMA, Kenya, Oct. 19

In this country, Big Men have traditionally taken care of their hometowns.

So it is that Eldoret, the tribal homeland of former President Daniel arap Moi, has an international airport and some of the smoothest roads around.

The people of Nyang’oma are dreaming of similar good fortune for their remote village should their own Big Man be elevated to high office. The only difference is that the Big Man of Nyang’oma is running for a United States Senate seat in Illinois.

The candidate, Barack Obama, one of the rising stars in the Democratic Party, traces his ancestral roots to this tiny farming community in western Kenya where Mr. Obama’s father, also named Barack, is buried in the yard of a humble home. His grandfather’s grave is a few feet away. Inside the tin-roofed Obama residence, Sarah Ogwel Onyango, Mr. Obama’s stepgrandmother, has a sack full of snapshots and newspaper clippings of Mr. Obama, which she flips through with a big smile on her face.

… ”We know he’s got his constituency there in America, the people who elect him,” said Said Obama, 38, the uncle. ”But we’re another constituency. He won’t want to see us suffering.”

… It is not a free-loading attitude that people here are expressing when they speak of largess coming their way after Mr. Obama takes office. It is a feeling of extended family: those who make it help those left behind. Mr. Obama may have never lived in Nyang’oma, or elsewhere in Kenya for that matter, but he is one of them in the popular imagination and surely, relatives say, he will want to share his great success with his kin.

”He is Kenyan,” Ms. Onyango insisted, prompting the other relatives to nod. She showed photographs of a young Mr. Obama climbing aboard a matatu, the crowded minibuses that local people use to get around. Another photograph in her stash featured Mr. Obama hugging Ms. Onyango, and she held up one that had the baby-faced politician beaming beside his other Kenyan relatives.

In Kenya, a half-black, half-white person like Mr. Obama — his mother is white, born in Kansas — is known colloquially as a ”point five.” Such mixed-raced people, black Kenyans say, frequently turn their backs on their African roots, particularly those who have spent substantial time in the West. But Mr. Obama’s relatives say that he has impressed them during his two visits to Nyang’oma with his interest in his ancestry, his love of local food and his ability to speak a few words of Luo, the language of the people around here.

Belfast Telegraph
October 27, 2004
Illinois is all that counts for a village in Kenya
BYLINE: By Meera Selva in N’yangoma, Kenya

… In this corner of Kenya, blood ties hold strong and the fact Barack Obama’s father was born and buried in the village of N’yangoma in Nyanza province makes Obama Jnr everyone’s favourite relative.
… Mr Obama’s extended family cannot be blamed for expecting some of the rewards of his success to come their way. At the Democratic convention last July, he drew a standing ovation for a speech in which he talked about how his father “grew up herding goats, and went to school in a tin-roof shack”. Nine years ago, he published an autobiography – Dreams of My Father – and has kept in touch with his grandmother, uncle and cousins in Nyanza.
Kenyan politics is centred around tribal loyalties: Kikuyu politicians are expected to look after their own, as are Luo, Masai, Meru, and the myriad other tribes that make up the country. No one sees why it should be different for Barack Obama.

Panafrican News Agency (PANA) Daily Newswire
November 3, 2004
KENYAN’S GOBBLE UP “NYAMA CHOMA” CELEBRATING OBAMA’S VICTORY

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) – As the world awaited the results of the US presidential elections with abated breath, residents of the western Kenyan city of Kisumu Tuesday night celebrated the election of Senator Barack Obama as the first black Democrat senator in US history.

The Kenyan-American, elected as one of the two senators from Illinois on Tuesday and who analysts predicted that one day could become America’s first black president, was born of a white mother and a Kenyan father from the Luo ethnic group on the shores of Lake Victoria.

… “I feel very elated. Very happy that my brother has finally made it in his ambition to become a senator. As a family, we feel fulfilled and promise to support him in his struggle,” Abong’o Obama, a relative, told PANA.

Africa News
November 4, 2004 Thursday
Kenya; Joy As Obama Romps Home
BYLINE: The Nation

Kenya took new US senator Barack Obama to its heart yesterday as he raced to a landslide victory in Illinois.
President Kibaki sent the man with a Kenyan father and a US mother a congratulatory message in which he spoke of his “great sense of joy and pride” at his stunning triumph, and added: “You have proved to be a role model not only for the American youth, but the many young people in Kenya and indeed in Africa.”
And in the home village of Mr Obama’s father – Kogelo, Siaya – hundreds of well wishers poured into the family homestead to offer their congratulations.
… “Now that our son has won, we can now look forward to better roads, improved health and educational facilities since we know he can provide us all that,” said Mr Dismas Aduda.

The Irish Times
November 4, 2004
Kenyan village greets rise of local son Obama
SECTION: World; US Elections; Pg. 3

… Ms Sarah Hussein Obama, the new senator’s 83-year-old step-grandmother, has got used to welcoming visitors from the American media to her two-room hut. She pulls out envelopes packed with photographs of the two visits that Barry, as the family calls him, has made.
“When he came for the first time, it was to see the grave of his father and I was very pleased because, for someone who was born over there and spent all his time over there, it was impressive to see him identify so much with this place,” she says in Luo, the language of her tribe.

The Nation (Kenya) – AAGM
November 7, 2004
BARACK OBAMA INSPIRATION
BYLINE: John Oywa

The tiny remote village of Nyangoma-Kogelo in Siaya District is full of excitement over an event that has happened thousands of kilometres way.

It is news of Senator-elect Barack Obama in the State of Illinois, United States. They have keenly followed Obama ‘s election campaigns and eventual landslide victory, relishing every moment of it. To them, this is village’s triumph because the American politician’s roots and deeply embedded here.

He has not announced whether he will be visiting the village where his father, Barack Obama Senior was born and brought up. However, villagers are talking about the possibility of building a helicopter landing pad for the new senator to use when “he comes back home”.

… “He is not a Kenyan, yes, but his father came from here. As a Senator, he can influence donors to fund projects in his grandmother’s village,” says Tobias Opiyo, a carpenter.

In fact, some villagers now refer to their village as Illinois. “We belong to Illinois, Kenyan chapter. If Obama will be giving funding to his State, we request that he sends a smaller percentage”, says Mr Opiyo.

… That Obama’s victory has elevated his father’s birth place to international status is obvious. Hitherto unknown and only associated with poverty, bad roads and shanty-like schools, Nyang’oma-Kogelo is today a household name.

Africa News
January 6, 2005 Thursday
Kenya; Obama Steps Into US History
BYLINE: The Nation

Mr Barrack Obama officially became a US senator on Tuesday at a ceremony attended by his relatives from Kenya and Cabinet minister Raphael Tuju.
And in Nyangoma Kogelo Village in Siaya District – the birthplace of Mr Obama’s father – residents were celebrating yesterday following the senator’s swearing-in.
… The swearing-in ceremony was held on Capitol Hill, Washington DC. It capped the meteoric rise to global prominence by the 43-year-old son of a Kenyan father and an American mother, both dead.
Mr Obama has not yet set a date for visiting his father’s homeland, but Mr Tuju said the Government would be “delighted to host him whenever he decides to come to Kenya”. He also conveyed a congratulatory message from President Kibaki.
The minister said he told Mr Obama that Kenyans understood that he was a US citizen with primary obligations to his constituents.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate at all for us to think he should be identified with Kenya,” Mr Tuju said.

Africa News
May 9, 2006 Tuesday
Children and Youth; Best and Brightest Shun Corrupt State of Politics
BYLINE: Inter Press Service

In an isolated village in Kenya’s western Siaya district, near Lake Victoria, 75-year-old William Onyango gazes at a faded newspaper clipping pinned to the wall of his dank, makeshift store.
“American Politician to Visit Kenya” says the headline. A smiling Senator Barack Obama gazes from the photograph accompanying the article.
The fifth black senator in U.S. history, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to an American mother and a Kenyan economist who hailed from Siaya.
… “It’s a sign of frustration at the lack of quality local leadership that Kenyans are looking to a U.S. senator with minor links to the country — who lives thousands of kilometres away and has declared that he is 100 percent American — for inspiration and hope,” says Kepta Ombati of Youth Agenda. This non-governmental organisation (NGO), based in he capital, Nairobi, is striving to involve young Kenyans in politics.

Africa News
July 17, 2006 Monday
Kenya; Villagers’ Hopes in Obama’s Homecoming
BYLINE: The East African Standard

When Illinois Senator Barrack Obama lands in the country next month and travels to his father’s birthplace, it would not simply be the trip of a man going back to his roots.
Expectations are high at his ancestral home at Nyang’oma Kogelo sub location in Siaya District. The residents of Ochere village in South East Alego location have lined up a list of expectations, which they hope their famous son will complete, almost overnight.
… The Luo Council of Elders chairman Riaga Ogalo says Obama’s homecoming should not be blown out of proportion. He is simply a man coming back home, says Ogalo, whose responsibilities as chairman of the elders council, includes bringing reason in matters affecting the Luo community.
“There should not be high expectations it would be good if he will come to Nyanza and visit Alego (his home),” Ogalo says.

… Mzee Gilbert Othano, a village elder, says Obama must be given a hero’s welcome and should come home often, even empty-handed.
“He does not have to come with a basket full of goodies he is just our son like the rest. The only difference is that he lives in the US and is on the way to the American presidency,” says Othano.
In Africa, a politician is expected to solve all the people’s problems. The expectations in Ochere village are higher because Obama is not only their son but also resides in the land of plenty.

Agence France Presse — English
August 24, 2006 Thursday 4:07 PM GMT
Kenya lays on hero’s welcome for favorite son US senator
BYLINE: Odhiambo Okombo
DATELINE: KISUMU, Kenya, Aug 24 2006

With fanfare normally reserved for visiting celebrities or heads of state, Kenya is preparing a lavish hero’s welcome for one of its favorite sons, US Senator Barack Obama.
The son of a Kenyan goat herder-turned-economist, the only African-American in the Senate and potential Democratic Party presidential nominee arrived here Thursday for a much-anticipated five-day trip amid widespread fervor.
His public schedule does not begin until Friday, the US embassy said.
But while officials set for gala receptions in Nairobi for Obama’s first visit to Kenya since his election to the upper house of the US legislature, the excitement is nowhere stronger than in his father’s western hometown.
…Despite the facts that Obama was born in Hawaii to his Kenyan father and US mother who divorced when he was two, has never lived in Kenya and last visited more than a decade ago, many here feel strong affinity for him.

“I simply adore him as one of our own,” says Kisumu resident Silpa Anyango, her hair covered with a baseball cap bearing the slogan “Obama for President” for an election he has not been nominated for and in which she will not vote.

“I hope that turns into a reality for him back in America,” she says. “He means a lot to us.”

Africa News
August 24, 2006 Thursday
Kenya; From Young ‘Barry’ to Top American Senator
BYLINE: The East African Standard

Mr Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to a Kenyan father, Mr Barack Hussein Obama, and an American mother, Ms Shirley [sic] Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas.

Mrs Hawa Hussein, Senator Obama’s aunt, speaks to The Standard at the family’s Kagelo home in Siaya District. Picture by James Keyi

…The Harvard Law School and Columbia University graduate was born at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Honolulu in Hawaii, where his parents were studying at the East-West Centre of the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

But aged only two, his parents separated and Obama Snr returned to Kenya.

Africa News
August 24, 2006 Thursday
Kenya; Village Beats the Drums for Returning Son
BYLINE: The Nation

US Senator Barack Obama will be received like a hero in Nyang’oma Village, where a school and a beer have been named after him and where his father was born and raised

He has not even landed in Kenya yet, but a play has been staged in his honour, and preparations to welcome him “home” are in top gear.

In the global village, he is probably the most prominent “Kenyan” even though he is a US citizen and a senator to boot.

But that is not an issue, because nearly everybody in Nyang’oma Village believes he will wipe away all their tears, build roads, schools, hospitals and dish out money.

In fact, they believe Senator Barack Obama will solve all their problems, after all, that is his “home.”

They started preparing to welcome him “home” in February this year, when Mr William Bellamy, the then US ambassador attended a ceremony there in which a primary and a secondary school constructed on a parcel of land donated by Mr Obama’s father, were re-named Senator Barack Obama.

Unofficially though, even an East African Breweries product, Senator has been re-named Obama,
in bars across Nyanza and in other places in pubs frequented by people from the lake side.

But the man whose grandmother, Mama Sarah Obama, plans to give very many eggs like any other grandchild has never lived among “his” people.

He grew up on the beaches of Hawaii, and the streets of Indonesia, raised by a white mother. He barely knew his Kenyan father, Barack Obama Senior.

… But four years later, Mr Obama lost heavily. He did not give up, however, and on November 2, 2004, he beat Alan Keyes, a Republican, to become the fifth African-American US senator – and Kenya’s most prominent son.

But the villagers are probably right in referring to him as their son, considering how passionate he is about his roots.

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
October 6, 2006 Friday
The black senator who could challenge Hillary
BYLINE: Alex Massie in Washington
SECTION: News; International; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 310 words

A BLACK senator with only two years in office has emerged as the star of the Democrats’ campaign for next month’s mid-term elections.

Kenyan-born Barack Obama, 45, is already being touted as a challenger to Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
October 7, 2006 Saturday
Obama cannot run for President
SECTION: FEATURES; Letters to the Editor; Pg. 25

SIR – I wish Kenyan-born Senator Barack Obama (report, October 6) well with his career, but are his aspirations for nomination as the Democrat’s presidential candidate not up against the insurmountable requirement of the US Constitution – that the President of the United States must have been born in America?
Haven’t possible ambitions of others, such as Henry Kissinger, been halted by this requirement?
Jeremy Mallin
Solihull, W Mids

Associated Press Worldstream
January 16, 2007 Tuesday 3:32 PM GMT
U.S. Sen. Obama  authorizes committee to investigate presidential potential
BYLINE: By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, whose father was a Kenyan, said Tuesday he is taking the initial step toward a presidential campaign that could make him the first black American to occupy the White House.
… Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, son of a Kenyan who herded goats as a child with his father, a domestic servant to Kenya’s British rulers. Barack Obama Sr. left Kenya on an academic scholarship and met and married Ann Dunham, born in the Midwestern state of Kansas, while they were students at the University of Hawaii.

The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
January 27, 2007 Saturday
State Edition
Obama the target of lies, smear
BYLINE: William Lowther
SECTION: WORLD; Pg. 22

WASHINGTON: The smear campaign against Democratic presidential candidate nominee Barack Obama has already began, with his rivals spreading rumours he attended a radical Islamic school.
Still two years out from the US election, Hillary Clinton’s main rival for his party’s nomination is having to fight the false claims as the most interesting election battle for years appears to be turning dirty from the outset.
… Senator Obama’s mother, a white American, divorced his father, a black Kenyan, soon after the boy was born in Hawaii.
She married an Indonesian student and the family lived in Jakarta for four years until the boy was 10 and moved back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.

Africa News
January 28, 2007 Sunday
Nigeria; Obama….is White House Beckoning On Africa?
BYLINE: This Day

Since its independence in 1776, the United States of America (USA) has been under the leadership of the white elite. The black had in the past made several attempts to control the US, but it was all to no avail. Recently a black senator rose to a position of glamour and took America by surprise by polling high amongst the presidential aspirannts. The question on everyone’s lips now is, can Senator Barack Hussein Obama, the Kenya-born American, win the White House race? In this piece, Gboyega Akinsanmi examines his chances and challenges
… From its inaugural president, Sir Booker[sic] Washington to its present one, Mr. George W. Bush, the control of White House has all this while been the legal right of the white populace. This year, the US will celebrate its two-hundred-and-thirty anniversary of political freedom. But indeed no American of black origin has ever won the White House race. But the law of change is gradually setting into the political space of the US. This is manifest in the victory of Democrat in the last Congress elections. In the same manner, the presidential race has commenced again featuring many prominent Americans. So unique among the aspirants for the White House race is Senator Barack Hussein Obama. But how can he go given his origin and background?
…Knowing His Origin
Senator Hussein Barack [sic] Obama was born in Hawaii on the 4th August, 1961. His father,  Barack Obama Snr was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British Colonial Authority.

Mail on Sunday (London)
January 28, 2007 Sunday
Bigamy, violence, drunken car crashes, deceit… the REAL family history of the man who could be America’s first black President;
Barack Obama’s book portrays his father as a Kenyan goatherd who lived the American dream… the truth is rather different
BYLINE: SHARON CHURCHER; ROB CRILLY; GILL PRINGLE
SECTION: FB 04; Pg. 44

IT IS a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherd rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist.

On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy.

This extraordinary story is told by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him to political success his father.

Mr Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, is flying off the shelves of US book stores, exciting and astonishing readers in equal measure. It is a bestseller, and no wonder because the story just gets better and better.

… Indeed, by offering up a conveniently potted account of his personal history in this way, he might even have made a pre-emptive strike on those sure to pose the awkward questions that inevitably face a serious contender for the White House.

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama’s reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth. We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.

And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama’s own relatives and family friends.

… But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan Independence movement.

He was put forward for an American-sponsored scholarship in economics, with the idea being that he would eventually use his Western-honed skills in the new Kenya. At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.

Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a fellow student called Ann a naive 18-year-old white girl to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in August, 1961.

Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind when he moved to the exclusive east coast university.

… Mr Obama travelled to his father’s ancestral Kenyan village. There he learned the full story of his father’s life and met some of his relatives.

The Monitor (Uganda) – AAGM
February 16, 2008 Saturday
CITIZENS FORM OBAMA SUPPORT GROUP
BYLINE: Grace Matsiko

Ugandans have formed a group to mobilise support for Kenyan born-senator, Barack Obama for the US presidency.

The Obama Solidarity Group (OSP) launched its campaign at Makerere University on January 18, according to one of the members.

“Our group has been formed to see that our candidate gets support from not only Americans but other parts of the world including Uganda because he is a symbol of Africa in a western democracy,” Mr Silver Mulindwa, a third year student at the university, said.