MWAURA: Obama in US and now Sunak in UK: Kenya’s ‘export’ to the world

Kenya is a great country in many ways, and is well known for winning almost every other marathon in the world.

In fact, for a Kenyan not to win, it always sounds like a misnomer, to the extent that some global athletics bodies at some point want to ‘rig’ the system, by limiting our participant numbers.

Nevertheless, we remain unrivaled in this field. What with the recent winning of Eliud Kipchoge, the world’s fastest marathoner, in Berlin?

Kenya is also known for its world class tea and coffee, as well as great safaris, with the ‘great migration’ in the Mara being one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

There are so many things to talk about what Kenya has to offer. It is quite surprising the country is being known for something very phenomenal. Its descendants are becoming world super power leaders!

In 2008, Barack Obama at 47 became the 44th US president, breaking history as the first black American to occupy the highest office in the country’s 200-year history.

This was indeed a  huge achievement since Black Americans constituted only 12 per cent of the American population. I remember visiting the state of Maryland in Annapolis, the seat of government sometimes back.

In the memorial hall of the state legislature, there’s a statute of George Washington, the first US president and a portrait of his family, with a black slave nanny (name unrecorded) holding their baby.

Obama being elected president was thus a very significant moment. Obama was born of a Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, an economist who met his wife at Harvard University.

Kenya seems to have beaten other countries in the game of producing a president of color in America, just like it does on the athletic track.

Fast forward this week, Britain, our coloniser and the dominant superpower of the 19th and 20th centuries was in a leadership crisis.

Liz Truss, the second female prime minister in British history resigned after only 44 days. Her economic recovery plan that targeted lower taxes for the rich backfired, and her chancellor of the exchequer (Finance Minister) Kwasi Kwarteng (of Ghanaian origin) had to resign, though this didn’t help the situation.

When she finally called it quits, Rishi Sunak, Penny Morduant and Boris Johnson were touted as possible successors. Boris was the first to withdraw, after meeting Sunak since he still had questions to answer to Parliament due to his past misconduct.

Morduant on the other hand backed out when she failed to garner the support of 100 MPs of his party to run for the seat. Eventually, Sunak, who came second to Truss in a previous contest, was elected unopposed to become the leader of the conservative party on October 24,2022. On October 25, he became the first British PM of Asian Descent.

The 42-year-old, former investment banker and hedge fund manager had only been elected as MP in 2015, to represent Richmond in North Yorkshire.

In his seven-year stint, he rose to become parliamentary undersecretary for local government in Theresa May’s administration, Chief Secretary of the Treasury and later Chancellor of the Exchequer under Boris. He was a Brexiter, having voted three times for Britain to leave the EU.

With Akshata Murty, who they met at Stanford while studying for an MBA while he was on a Fulbright scholarship, they have two girls and are both ranked as the 222nd richest people in Britain.

What is even more remarkable is that Sunak’s father, Yashvir, was born and raised in Kenya. His mother was born in Tanzania. One would want to imagine Sunak, who was a head boy in his secondary school, must know some one or two words in Kiswahili. Again, Kenya beats so many other nations in producing a leader of one of the countries with veto power at the UN.

In a very stunning twist, the coloniser, has now become the ‘colonized’ and if you have watched the newest movie in town called ‘Woman King’ you would understand why this is so significant.

Sunak’s story is fairly inspiring as he rose from relative obscurity after waiting tables during summer, while in college, and interning at the Conservative Campaign headquarters, as he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Lincoln College.

It’s interesting to note that his maternal grandparents had to sell the grandmother’s (Sraksha) wedding jewelry for them to afford to move to the UK.

Sunak’s paternal grandparents had moved from Punjab in British India to come work in Nairobi in 1935. They stayed in the country for 25 years.

This story teaches us that no matter the obstacles, one can still make it in life, and that when you make sacrifices for the future of your children, you never know how things might turn out, and what barriers you are helping to break.

Who would have thought that even for a day, that the global face of modern Britain would be a PM of Asian-African origin?