Q    Okay.  Thank you very much.  I will express myself in French, if that is --

THE PRESIDENT:  That's fine.  Somebody will translate for me?  Yes?  Go ahead.  Just make sure that you stop after each sentence, because otherwise she will forget what you had to say.

Q    Thank you very much.  (Speaks in French and is translated.) Mr. President, hello.  And hello, everybody.  I'm Fatima Sungo (phonetic语音的) of Mali.  I do have a question for you and I look forward to getting your answer.  But before I do so, I'd like to begin by telling you, Mr. President, how truly honored and privileged（享有特权的） we feel to be with you today, and how privileged we are to express the voices of African youth, of African young leaders, and of course fully¹ appreciate your recognizing us and giving us the opportunity to be here, and also recognizing our own responsibility to take your voice back home.

I'd like to say that I'm convinced this is an important watershed²（流域，分水岭） moment, this is the beginning of important change, the wonderful initiative you had to call us all here.  I wonder when did you see that particular light?  When did you imagine that bringing us here would be such a good idea?  I'm wondering what your thought process was, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, one of the things that happens when you're President is that other people have good ideas and then you take credit for them.  (Laughter.)  So I want to make sure that I don't take credit for （因……得到好评）my ideas -- for these ideas -- because the truth is my staff works so hard in trying to find new ways that we can communicate not just to the heads of state, but also at the grassroots.

And the reason, I think, is because when you think about Africa, Africa is the youngest continent.  Many of the countries that you represent, half of the people are under 30.  And oftentimes（时常地） if all you’re doing is talking to old people like me, then you’re not reaching the people who are going to be providing the energy, the new initiatives, the new ideas.  And so we thought that it would be very important for us to have an opportunity to bring the next generation of leaders together.

That's point number one.  Point number two -- and I’m going to be blunt（直率的，不锋利的） occasionally during this forum³, so I hope you don't mind -- sometimes the older leaders get into old habits, and those old habits are hard to break.  And so part of what we wanted to do was to communicate directly to people who may not assume that the old ways of doing business are the ways that Africa has to do business.

So in some of your countries, freedom of the press is still restricted.  There’s no reason why that has to be the case.  There’s nothing inevitable⁴ about that.  And young people are more prone⁵ to ask questions, why shouldn’t we have a free press?  In some of your countries, the problem of corruption⁶ is chronic⁷（慢性的，长期的） .  And so people who have been doing business in your country for 20, 30 years, they’ll just throw up their hands and they’ll say, ah, that's the way it is.

But Robert Kennedy had a wonderful saying, where he said, some people see things and ask why, and others see things that need changing and ask, why not.  And so I think that your generation is poised⁸ to（信誓旦旦，准备就绪） ask those questions, “Why not?”  Why shouldn’t Africa be self-sustaining agriculturally?  There’s enough arable⁹ land（耕地） that if we restructure how agriculture and markets work in Africa, not only could most countries in Africa feed themselves, but they could export those crops to help feed the world.  Why not?

New infrastructure¹⁰ -- it used to be that you had to have telephone lines and very capital intensive in order to communicate.  Now we have the Internet and broadband and cell phones, so you -- the entire continent may be able to leapfrog（跳背） some other places that were more highly developed and actually reach into the future of communications in ways that we can’t even imagine yet.  Why not?

So that’s the purpose of this.  I also want to make sure that all of you are having an opportunity to meet each other, because you can reinforce each other as you are struggling and fighting in your own countries for a better future.  You will now have a network of people that help to reinforce what it is that you’re trying to do.  And you know that sometimes change makes you feel lonely.  Now you’ve got a group of people who can help reinforce what you’re doing.

Okay.  It’s a gentleman’s turn.  This is why there are leaders, everybody has something to say.  But you don’t have to snap.  No, no, no.  It’s a guy’s turn -- this gentleman right here.