Poverty is no excuse. Development aid has to be linked to economic development, - Auma Obama

I manage that because Barack Obama’s in his present situation as the president of the United States is a very new thing, and it’s also something very temporary. I’ve been around for a lot longer, so I’ve already defined myself long before he became the president of the United States so in my own right I have my own identity. So in that sense I am able to, well, actually I’m learning, and I keep having to adjust to being Barack Obama’s sister, who is the president of the United States. But being me as Auma Obama, that is not an issue. It’s trying to accommodate the “new” – this new role that I’m received in, the attention I get, this visibility I get. In terms of my identity I think I’m pretty secure, as best one can be.

Germans always like to think that they have a very liberal attitude towards Africans. But when you scratch the surface you can see that they they still carry around the prejudices of their childhood. In German fairy tales black people always appear as the bogey man. You don't forget things like that so easily.

He wanted to know everything about us, everything about my father everything about our family. I took him to so many relatives. It was part of finding about his own identity.