Political Quotes

“I can tell the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Arkansas if you ask the average American to give you their image of Africa, it will be an old image. The image of new Africa is a continent that is changing dramatically as those numbers show. Listen to these numbers: In the year 2000, 7 percent of the population of Africa had access to the Internet. In 2009, the number was up to 27 percent. That is almost a fourfold increase in access to the Internet. There was also a revolution when it comes to mobile telephones. In 1998, there were fewer than 4 million phones on the entire continent. Today there are 500 million. From 4 million to 500 million phones. Most people have this image of a dusty little village in Africa where people live under pretty primitive circumstances, and that is true in many parts of Africa. But 78 percent of Africa's rural population has access to clean water. Seventy-eight percent has access to clean water. Access to information and the global market are the pillars of building a middle class. In Africa this means a middle class hungry for goods and services, and the United States can use that to our advantage. I am openminded about this. I want us to be able to import from Africa as well because that is the nature of a good trade relationship. It cannot be all one-sided. Of course, our first priority is American jobs in Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, and Colorado.…”