As an undergraduate at Amherst College in western Massachusetts, Kenyatta would set off to see America during weekends or breaks. He loved the freedom. "The best time of my life," he remembers.

Once, he and his roommates took a road trip to Florida. Another time they caught a cheap charter flight to Los Angeles and drove to San Diego, just to see something new. He switched majors several times, in the end settling on a double major of economics and political science. He dated different women, partied late, and audited random classes on slow afternoons. Everyone knew who he was, says an old schoolmate, but no one cared.

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When he graduated, he was ready to apply for an MBA. The idea was for him to run the family's vast business empire. That's what was expected of him as the son of one of Africa's big men.

Kenyatta was born in 1961, just as Kenya was shaking off its British colonial masters. (In Swahili, his name literally means "independence" or "freedom.") His father, who helped bring Kenya this independence, dominated the political scene for more than 20 years until his death. Almost automatically, power then passed to the elder Kenyatta's deputy, Daniel arap Moi, who proceeded to rule for another two decades.

But Kenyatta didn't get his MBA. He went home and chose not to run the family's vast enterprises - five-star hotels, airlines, banks, and giant farms - that his father had amassed. Instead, public service called. "It was always there, my interest in politics," he protests, defensive against the charges of nepotism and a life of privilege. "But I brought a lot back from the US which really helped me decide. I left Kenya thinking one way. But then I was able to sit back and see it all in context. It was the first time I saw clearly."

To be sure, study in the West does not automatically bestow perspective, integrity, or a penchant for democratic principles. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, for example, has six degrees from prestigious Western universities. Few today would consider Mr. Mugabe at the vanguard of democratic reforms.

Some say study overseas can be counterproductive, imbuing ideals that do not suit the real world back home. But many of those interviewed say that overseas exposure made them "global citizens," giving them a perspective that they wouldn't have been able to get without leaving Africa for a time.

Kenyatta was sheltered growing up, he admits today with a lopsided grin. The people around him did not encourage any real challenge to the system.

"Things were done one way, and that was the only way," he shrugs, resisting a cigarette - he is trying to quit - and smoothing down his smart gray suit. He owns traditional African garb - a colobus monkey skin and hat, and a fly whisk, for example - but they come out only on special occasions. He prefers his designer clothes.

Kenyatta certainly benefited from Kenya's corruption. But unlike many other sons and daughters of privilege across the continent, he claims to want to fix what has gone wrong. He came back "not exactly to make amends," he says, fumbling as he tries to formulate carefully the delicate sentence, "but, well, I began seeing there were a lot of things not necessarily right with the order of things in Kenya."

'Are you trying to be white?'

If you are an African, says Darkoh in Botswana, and you leave Africa and come back, people more often than not regard you with suspicion.

"They think you have tried too hard to Westernize," he says. "They ask: 'Are you trying to be white?'" New ideas and dynamic people are not welcomed with open arms, he says.

So governments can become filled with the also-rans. "A crisis like HIV/AIDS comes along and everyone looks to the government to address it - but they can't handle it," he complains. "Most of the systemic institutional inadequacies we are currently experiencing with HIV/AIDS existed long before the disease came knocking on our door. HIV/AIDS did not create these systemic deficits - it has simply exacerbated them."

The numbers bear out Darkoh's concerns. According to statistics from the International Organization for Migration, more African scientists and engineers work in the US than in all of Africa. A few years ago, Zambia had 1,600 doctors; now only 400 practice there. More than 21,000 doctors from Nigeria are working in the US. Sixty percent of Ghana's doctors left during the 1980s, placing the healthcare system in critical condition. An estimated 20 percent of skilled South Africans have left the country in the past 10 years, and in Zimbabwe the professional workforce has shrunk by two-thirds in just five years.

In order to replace those who have left the continent for greener pastures, Africa spends an estimated $4 billion annually on recruiting some 100,000 skilled expatriates.

The solution, says Darkoh, is for African governments to invest in getting the right people. "Major corporations do not get the results they do by hiring weak talent," he explains. "The right people in the right place at the right time will deliver the right results." It is time for donors and recipient countries to insist on results and institute accountability frameworks, he says. "In the 1980s, development aid was based on cold war needs, but today, it's about accountability. That, coupled with African leaders realizing that they themselves have to be more responsible ... those are already improvements," he says.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is seen as part of this shift in approach. Last year, NEPAD was initiated by African governments themselves, whereby they agreed to become more accountable for good governance in return for billions of dollars in annual investment, aid, and debt reduction from wealthy donor countries.

Africa Online's Makatiani, a NEPAD advocate, already sees signs of progress in Kenya. "During Moi's time, corruption was the norm and no one was ever punished for being corrupt. But time has passed and the new government is changing that." In the nine months since Kibaki came to power, the government collected more in taxes than in any similar period before, and corrupt businessmen, as Makatiani puts it, "are running for their lives." Makatiani says these changes can be found all over the continent. Corruption "is becoming much less acceptable," he says.

Darkoh adds, "Now, the governments need to further shape up and woo back their Diaspora communities, instead of making it hard for them."

He would rather be in Africa, he says, than anywhere else in the world. He just started his own healthcare services company - BroadReach Healthcare - which assists developing countries, donors, and assistance agencies achieve better outcomes on investments made in healthcare, particularly for HIV/AIDS treatment. He is able to make a meaningful and tangible difference in Africa, he says, which he might not be able to do in the US. He knows others, Africans and Americans born to African parents, who would come back as well - if conditions were right.

"But they worry," he says, about everything from respect and good working conditions to security, healthcare, and civil liberties. "You might want to be a hero," he suggests, "but when you start thinking about actually moving, your mind begins wandering to questions such as whether there's a health clinic to go to when your kid gets an asthma attack in the middle of the night and what your bank account is looking like."

A call for young people to serve

Kenyatta doesn't worry about his bank account. But 10 months after his concession speech, his pace has not slackened. He can be found in his office until 11 p.m., his crumpled suit jacket tossed over a chair.

He meets daily with NGOs, visits constituencies across the country, works on restructuring his party, and, from the benches of the opposition in the old assembly hall downtown, raises questions on every issue of the day - from constitutional reform to anticorruption legislation. He embraces the democratic principle of the "loyal opposition" in a country that has never really allowed such a thing.

"I get fed up a lot," admits Kenyatta. "Most of us do."

But, he stresses, the problem is that most young Africans assume leadership is a game of others, and not about them. "You tend to lose the best minds and best assets because young people don't want to engage in the rough and tumble. But that is the wrong mentality. You need to engage," he says

Makatiani says the politics of Africa are going into "Phase 2": The older generation of leaders were revolutionaries, freedom fighters like Kenyatta's father, accustomed to taking big leaps and getting things fast, he explains. "But the new generation like myself is more realistic and is ready to take smaller steps," he says. "We are ready to work hard for incremental, but real, success."

Kenyatta agrees, and says that he embodies that shift. "I believed, as a child, it was the right of others to be there and set up the rules of the game - and neither I nor anyone else could challenge that. But, you know, with more exposure you begin to think more: Actually, I can do it, too - and differently."

COMING HOME: Africa's emerging power players
KENYATTA Possibly Kenya's next president		MAKATIANI Launched Africa's biggest Internet company		KAYOMBA Founded an independant newspaper in Rwanda		DARKOH Leads Botswana's free AIDS-drug program
BRUKTAWAIT Started Ethiopia's largest private bank TSELE General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches
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