President Uhuru Kenyatta has asked American institutions to support indigenous African solutions fashioned to address governance challenges facing the continent.
The President said the US and the world at large have a lot to gain by making Africa work for its people.
President Kenyatta spoke on Wednesday in Washington DC when he addressed leaders of the Atlantic Council at a forum dubbed “The Future of The US-Kenya Strategic Partnership”
He cautioned American institutions against advancing democracy as a one-size-fits-all prescription saying the approach undermines the foundations upon which the concept is based.
He said African countries should be given opportunities to engineer new approaches that support and extend democracy in line with their realities.
The Head of State pointed out that Kenya is currently engineering its own solutions to political, social and governance challenges facing it through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).
He said the BBI process “is a homegrown (Kenyan) solution for a divisive political culture that has often sparked electoral crises over the last thirty years”.
The Kenyan leader noted that BBI, which was framed as an anchor for his “handshake” with Raila Odinga, is aimed at addressing cyclic post-election violence by ensuring inclusivity in government.
The Atlantic Council is an American Atlanticist international affairs think-tank founded in 1961.
It is a non-partisan institution aimed at galvanizing the US leadership and engaging with the world for purposes of finding solutions to global challenges.
