I don’t follow American politics with the same passion I follow African politics, so it was hard for me to know what parts of the Democratic National Convention to tune in for. But I knew I should be watching Tuesday night to see Barack Obama speak, for the simple reason that Kenyan blogger friends have been raving about him for months. So I scored lots of political knowledge points by inviting friends over for his speech (and then “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) last Tuesday night.

No one was disappointed – after cheering along with the crowds at a vision where blue and red America, not to mention black and white America, live and work together, friends and I started designing our “Obama for President 2012 (oh, and Kerry for president 2004)” t-shirts.

What’s been fun over the last few days is watching the explosion of support and enthusiasm in the African blogosphere for the future Senator from Illinois. Mental Acrobatics, a Kenyan blog, has an analysis of “Obama, the Uber-candidate”:

Kenyan (father): black vote, immigrant vote

Chicago, Illinois (where he is standing): urban vote, black vote again, big state vote…

Ory Okolloh, a Kenyan colleague of mine at HLS, broke the story a few days ago that popular Kenyan beer “Senator” is now being referred to as “Obama”, with people walking into Nairobi bars and ordering a round of Obamas. The New York Observer has an excellent piece today by Andrew Rice, who had the chance to follow Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta, to the DNC to watch the Obama speech. Needless to say, the Kenyan delegation is thrilled at the prospect of a native son holding one of the most powerful offices in the US.

The enthusiasm over Obama in Kenya reminds me a bit of the Ghanaian excitement over Freddy Adu. Never mind that soccer is, at best, America’s sixth most popular sport – the idea of a Ghanaian superstar becoming famous enough to appear in Nike ads is hugely exciting. Adu has literally put Ghana on the map for millions of American sports fans. (And, based on my last trip to Accra, he’s put lots of DC United shirts on the back of Ghanaian soccer fans.) For millions of Americans who haven’t thought about East Africa since the embassy bombings in 1998, Obama is likely the first person to make them think about Kenya.

Obama has accomplished an amazing feat already: he’s captured the imagination of two nations. I can’t wait to see what he does as a senator.

Special bonus section – Kenya-focused blogs you should be reading:

Virtual Insanity

Mental Acrobatics

Thinker’s Room

The Kenyan Pundit

Unganisha

Brad DeGraf of MediaVenture.org just pointed me to an interesting new project, Talk to US. Talk to US invites people around the world to submit 30-second videos for an American audience, a way for people who have no good way to speak to mainstream America to share hopes, fears, thoughts, etc.

I see the project as conceptual kin to Voices Without Votes, which has been collecting “Letters to America” prior to the November elections, letting people around the world lobby US voters. The collected letters reveal a nuanced understanding of US politics, including a Nigerian plea for Ralph Nader to stay out of the race. But the overall submissions have been scant (less than 100 collected over several months) and most seem to be from Canada, a country most Americans are pretty used to hearing from.

I think it’s possible Talk to US could have a much greater impact than that Voices Without Votes if it overcomes a pair of technical and conceptual challenges. While video gives words extra weight through context, image and voice, it substantially raises the barrier to entry for most participants. I can imagine friends in Ghana being compelled to write an essay urging American voters to make one choice or another, but not having the means to make a video conveying the same sentiments. I think the project organizers will need to hook up with local TV producers to improve their chances of getting varied and diverse voices. I can imagine a number of African TV stations enjoying the opportunity to solicit video messages of people talking to America – it could make good “man on the street” content, and the project is given extra weight by the idea that great video clips could get aired in the US.

But I also think it’s important that Talk to US focus on what people are already saying than just on the idea of talking to the US population. While there’s some truth to the fact that the US is the world’s “last remaining superpower” and that, therefore, our upcoming election is one with global consequences, I think it may be less important to hear what Kenyans think about the US elections than what they think about corruption and local politics. The most moving videos I’ve seen on the site – like Brian Nganwa, an HIV positive youth from Uganda, speaking about prejudice – don’t talk so much about US politics as about the issues that are locally important.

That said, I’m supportive of any project that helps Americans hear the world’s voices, and grateful that Talk to US is helping add voices and faces to words.

And, with that, my usual plug for BlogAfrica – we’ve moved the site over to AllAfrica’s servers, and we’re now editing inputs from over 150 blogs, putting out a newsfeed of about ten stories a day from all over the continent. Add the feed to your aggregator and get smart, funny voices from South Africa to Tunisia every day…