Nairobi — America's President Barack Obama has, for the first time, this week talked about Kenya's political leadership. In an interview whose content has been published elsewhere in this paper, President Obama was livid about the slow pace of political and economic reforms and reconciliation efforts.

Leaving little doubt about his disdain for poor governance, he rebuffed the tired song that Africa's problems were a creation of colonial legacy, saying that the problem is bad leadership. How else, he posed, could one explain why Kenya lags behind in development when countries like South Korea and Malaysia, with which it once had similar GDP rates, have grown so fast to join the ranks of newly industrialised states?

President Obama's sentiments are not borne out of his filial affiliation to Kenya, but the international community's anxiety over Kenya's slide into poor governance.

But what he said was not new. It is the view of every Kenyan, who is appalled by the inertia in government. Few things have been done to redress the past wrongs, including establishing a new electoral team, jump-starting constitutional review and starting the process of redrawing the electoral boundaries.

Major challenges remain. The resettlement of the displaced people has stalled, efforts to arbitrate over the violence after the elections are being undermined by political wheeler-dealers, while youth unemployment rises and the gap between the haves and the have-nots widens.

The public service has not been re-oriented to fit into the new order either. When things are so bad that President Obama raises his voice about Kenya, the local political leadership needs to be alarmed that all is not well and that the world is watching.

They have few options, but to push through radical reforms to create a new socio-economic and political order and reverse the country's slide to the edges.