Senator Obama has received a call conceding defeat from Senator McCain, who himself gave a very gracious and dignified concessionary speech to his supporters, and from serving President George Bush. Obama has just given a rousing speech, enjoining the USA and the world in a reformist mission.

Global news networks continue to ponder the ramifications of this victory and what it means for the world affairs, and the present economic crisis. The fact that he won such a commanding victory, latest figures show a margin in excess of 4 million votes, and his party a commanding majority in Congress, permits a level of reform that would otherwise be unlikely. More people, both in absolute and percentage terms, have voted Barack Obama than voted either George Bush or even Bill Clinton.

The USA's new chief executive's victory is all the more special for its emphatic dismissal of the imaginary barriers that had been placed in his way by his detractors. Where he was proclaimed the most liberal senator in US history, he went on to win states that had been defined as solidly Republican. His problem with the Latino voters proved illusory as he went on to win Florida, and more importantly to win Cuban American votes there in spite of a strong campaign to link him to socialism and the Cuban government.

Those rural white voters, who it was said would never vote a black candidate, proved to be more flexible than the pundits suggested. By the time the setting sun had reached  Democratic party bastions on the West Coast of the United States, voters in Appalachia and America's industrial heartland had given Senator Obama an unassailable lead. In Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Virginia and in North Carolina, he shattered these barriers and won more than white Democratic candidates like Kerry and Gore had done in 2000 and in 2004. Even in deep rural counties, those coloured an emphatic scarlet on the electoral map, even where he did not win, the Illinois Senator posted numbers many percentage points higher than his recent predecessors on the party ticket had done. He had persuaded America, just as he had previously persuaded the world.

In news rooms now, pundits echo Obama's lauding of his campaign team and its leaders, David Plouffe and David Axelrod. Their tactics and the obdurate dedication to the Howard-Dean-inspired 50 state strategy won Obama a victory that recalls his 2004 Democratic Party rejection of the division of the USA into red and blue states.

This campaign strategy pioneered the use of the new technology, and massive grassroots organisation, both to build a movement across ethnic, religious, class and political fissures and to raise more money than any political campaign has in the history of the United States. It is sure to be studied and embraced by political parties and movements around the world seeking to build broad coalitions based on ideas and a desire for genuine reform. Even from a more traditional viewpoint, the discipline and organisation of the campaign, its crafting of a sturdy quilt from its constituent parts both in the gruelling Primary Season and in the General Election campaign was exemplary and in such difficult conditions as Obama ran under, a truly outstanding accomplishment.

The unashamedly cosmopolitan and globally popular Obama, a politician who refuses the confinements of ethnicity, race, class and religion, has raised hopes for a mending of fences between the United States and the rest of the world. Asia looks to his childhood in Indonesia, the Islamic world to his middle name and time in an Islamic country, Africa to his father's heritage, Europe to his dedication to a universal humanism, Christians to his belief in a caring, responsible and transformative faith, African Americans to his experence of discrimination and poor Americans everywhere to his experience of want and exclusion. All these hope that this global experience of his will rally energy and resources and create a common purpose as the nations of men work to tackle the global food crisis, the clash called the War on Terror, global poverty, the climate change crisis and the increasingly frightening effects of the global economic meltdown.

His appeals for a more participatory democracy and  for reform are refreshing, especially coming at a time when the global economy is revisiting its faith in unhindered free market capitalism and states are taking a keener interest in participating their economies. The global challenges we are facing will benefit from his background as a scholar, especially if as his campaign effort indicated, he adopts a pragmatic approach that is responsive to the advise of experts and intellectuals.

It is this pragmatism  of Obama's also that leads to a hope that even those elements of his present policy platform we find problematic can be refined and even reversed. Whether it is on PEFA, trade, farm subidies, AFRICOM or the War on Afghanistan (and Pakistan) we can hope that the new President will be sensitive to the strong sentiments against his positions, and to just how harmful these are for Kenya and Africa. We do as we must confess a divergence between our needs and those of his constituents, but the celebrations around the world today evince an assumption of global solidarity around shared values.

We have chosen hope.