Africa's new class of power players

In Africa, the man with the tribe behind him is expected to take care of his people at the expense of everyone else. National pride or unity is not a concept that comes easily to a continent where colonialists unceremoniously split up rivers, mountains, tribes, and families as they divvied up the land among themselves. Tribalism has been the order of the day ever since. Everything, it seems, takes a backseat to ethnicity. Take Kenya's exalted long-distance runners. When a Kenyan wins the New York marathon, the media in Nairobi hail it as a Kalenjin or a Luhya victory - not a win for Kenya.

Kenyatta's father, as president, gave members of the Kikyuyu tribe - Kenya's largest and most influential - a disproportionate share of political and economic power. Afterward, President Daniel arap Moi exploited distrust of the Kikyuyus for his own ends and handed out favors to his tribesmen, the Kalenjin, as well as to other supportive ethnic groups.

But in last year's elections, both Kenyatta and current President Kibaki - also a Kikyuyu - campaigned on platforms to stop this cycle. The peaceful elections, with voting patterns less ethnically based than before, may be an example of an emerging national spirit that weaken old ethnic cleavages.

"We are not fighting for liberation anymore," says Kenyatta. "Now it's time to rediscover what sort of leadership we want. We need to design and build systems and create institutions that will serve - not just individuals or this generation - but posterity. America has done this, and this is why it is still standing firm after 200 years."

America was home for Ernest Darkoh. He had a nice apartment in the New York borough of Brooklyn, he was making good money, his social life was thriving, and his first nephew had just been born.

But something was gnawing at him.

"I could see my life stretching ahead of me in the States," says the 33-year-old American-born son of Ghanaian parents. "I would be ... just another professional."

It's the end of a long day at work in his stuffy office in Gabarone, Botswana's tiny capital city, and he sways slightly on a swivel chair. "What I wanted to do was follow my heart," he says. "Go somewhere where my input was really needed."

More than 15 million people have died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and to date, 11 million have been orphaned. In Botswana, 38 percent of adults are HIV-positive and life expectancy has plummeted to below 40 from over 65. By 2010, it could sink to 29, predicts the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS - a level not seen in developed nations since the Middle Ages.

Outside input here is needed, and Darkoh - with a medical degree and a master's in public health from Harvard, an MBA from Oxford, and a several years' experience working at McKinsey Company in New York - wanted to give it.

One of his projects at the consulting firm was a study, the first of its kind, of the feasibility of launching HIV/AIDS antiretroviral therapy in Botswana. Soon after, he was recruited by Botswana's government to head its AIDS-drug rollout efforts. It is a groundbreaking project into which private US companies and foundations have poured millions.

The program distributes the drugs free of charge to anyone who needs them. It is generally regarded as the developing world's most comprehensive assault on AIDS and a model for fighting the epidemic elsewhere.

Even so, Darkoh hesitated before accepting. "I had certain criteria in my head that needed to be fulfilled," he says. "I wanted to make sure I knew what I was heading into."

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