NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. first woman Jill Biden mentioned Friday that she feels a kinship with Africans throughout her sixth go to to the continent, telling The Related Press in an unique interview that she needs to assist nations preventing for democracy — “identical to I really feel we’re doing in the US.”

“We can’t take issues with no consideration, as a result of it is such a valuable system of presidency,” she mentioned. “We won’t be complacent. We’ve got to maintain preventing for it.”

The primary woman opened her journey earlier this week in Namibia, a younger democracy, the place on Friday she delivered a rousing speech to greater than 1,000 college students. She informed them the democracy their dad and mom and grandparents fought for is now theirs to defend and defend.

Within the interview, Biden mentioned that when first woman Monica Geingos invited her to go to, “I believed there is not any higher place to go than to go to Namibia” to “encourage the youth to get entangled, keep concerned, struggle for his or her democracy, identical to I really feel we’re doing in the US.”

Africa’s 54 international locations are a mixture of typically fragile democracies in locations like Nigeria, which has an election this weekend; and extra troubled nations like Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Chad and Sudan which have seen coups in recent times; or Uganda, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, the place presidents have been clinging to energy for many years. Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990.

American democracy was severely examined after President Joe Biden’s election in 2020 when the incumbent, Donald Trump, repeatedly informed lies concerning the election being stolen from him. Tons of of his supporters who believed his conspiracy theories rioted on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent try to dam Congress from certifying Biden as the brand new president in an unprecedented effort to thwart the customary peaceable switch of energy.

In her speech, Biden mentioned ladies’s and ladies voices should be extra outstanding within the debate about democracy.

“As the primary technology to be born right into a free Namibia, the legacy that your dad and mom and grandparents created is now yours — yours to defend and defend,” Biden informed a largely pupil viewers at Namibia College of Science and Know-how.

“Yours to develop. And as we glance ahead, we should do not forget that the struggle for democracy has no finish.”

Biden later Friday moved on to Kenya, the second and last cease on her journey.

She highlighted the plight of girls and ladies on her earlier stops in Namibia. In Kenya, she plans to make use of her stature to attract consideration to a devastating drought throughout the Horn of Africa that’s leaving folks hungry and jeopardizing thousands and thousands of lives. She had visited in 2011 throughout a extreme famine.

“I’m hoping that, you understand, that folks do concentrate,” Biden mentioned within the AP interview. “To see the drought and what I noticed earlier than with, simply, youngsters who haven’t any meals they usually can’t have livestock, they’ll’t develop crops and to be ravenous, and so I’m attempting to actually create consciousness and, and simply see how far issues have come within the 10 years, actually, that I’ve been gone.”

The primary woman, who has hung out in additional than a half dozen of Africa’s international locations, mentioned she feels “actually comfy” on the continent.

“One factor I’ve realized is that every nation is so completely different — the individuals are completely different, the tradition is completely different, the faith is completely different, the language,” she mentioned. “However, you understand, all of us share so lots of the similar values.

“And I believe that’s essential, that we’re on the lookout for stability, a steady authorities. We’re on the lookout for, you understand, illustration of the folks. We’re on the lookout for leaders who’ve character and integrity, and that’s what I believe we need to foster. They usually do, too.”

She mentioned the Biden administration just isn’t “isolationist like we had been changing into within the final administration,” a reference to Trump and his America-first posture.

“We’re reaching out and saying, ’Hey, we’re a world society. Take our fingers. Let’s do that collectively,” she mentioned of the present administration.

Biden has labored with younger folks all through a 30-year-long educating profession and mentioned in her deal with to the scholars that they need to train their rights to disagree and to dissent, to talk up after they see injustice and assist leaders who take heed to their considerations.

She famous that, in the US, “we’re nonetheless defending and strengthening our democracy, nearly 250 years after our founding.”

“It isn’t straightforward. Democracy isn’t straightforward. It takes work,” she mentioned through the rousing, rally-style speech. “However it’s price it, as a result of democracy delivers.”

Afterward, she labored her means across the courtyard in a means that she hardly ever do to shake fingers and pose for selfies with scores of excited college students. They cheered at one level when she danced briefly to a drum-heavy African beat.

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Related Press author Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi contributed to this report.