First lady voices support of democracy in Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. first lady Jill Biden said Friday that she feels a kinship with Africans during her sixth visit to the continent, telling the Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she wants to support nations fighting for democracy — “just like I feel we're doing in the United States.”
“We cannot take things for granted, because it's such a precious system of government,” she said. “We can't be complacent. We have to keep fighting for it.”
The first lady opened her trip earlier this week in Namibia, a young democracy, where on Friday she delivered a rousing speech to more than 1,000 students. She told them the democracy their parents and grandparents fought for is now theirs to defend and protect.
In the interview, Biden said that when first lady Monica Geingos invited her to visit, “I thought there's no better place to go than to go to Namibia” to “encourage the youth to get involved, stay involved, fight for their democracy, just like I feel
we're doing in the United States.”
Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990.
In her speech, Biden said women's and girls voices need to be more prominent in the debate about democracy.
“As the first generation to be born into a free Namibia, the legacy that your parents and grandparents created is now yours — yours to defend and protect,” Biden told a largely student audience at Namibia University of Science and Technology.
Biden later Friday moved on to Kenya, the second and final stop on her trip.
She planned to use her stature to draw attention to a devastating drought across the Horn of Africa that is leaving people hungry and jeopardizing millions of lives.
“To see the drought and what I saw before with, just, children who have no food and they can't have livestock, they can't grow crops and to be starving, and so I'm trying to really create awareness and, and just see how far things have come in the 10 years, really, that I've been gone,” she said.