Obama hails 'new moment' of promise in Africa
President Barack Obama is hailing a "new moment of promise" in
Africa, using a historic visit to urge all nations on the continent
to establish their own identity in an increasingly interconnected
world.
Speaking Saturday to the parliament of Ghana, Obama traced his own
roots to the sub-continent. He declared: "I have the blood of Africa
within me."
Obama, the first U.S. African-American president, said that
Washington has for far too long seen the nations of Africa as
patrons rather than partners in world affairs, and said it's time
for that to change.,
But he also said the destiny of Africa is up to its people and their
leaders. Obama said, "the boundaries between peoples are overwhelmed
by our connections."
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President Barack Obama said his visit to Ghana on Saturday was
designed to illustrate that "Africa is not separate from world
affairs."
Obama said events in Africa do not lose their effects at the
continent's borders and said Africa is a fully integrated part of
the global economy.
"What happens here has an impact everywhere," Obama said during a
meeting with Ghanaian President John Atta Mills.
Obama scheduled a 21-hour visit to the West African nation to
highlight that country's democratic tradition and engagement with
the West. During his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking
office, Obama sought to lift up the continent of his ancestors —
while keeping its emotions in check.
Greeted by a rush of excitement on his arrival here, the United
States' first black president planned a speech to Ghana's Parliament
on Saturday outlining his hope for a future Africa prospering in
democracy. He was also visiting a hospital and a one-time slave
trading post, joined by his wife, Michelle, a great-great
granddaughter of slaves.
But his speech was also pitched as a sobering account of Africa's
enduring afflictions: hunger, disease, corruption, ethnic strife and
strongman rule.
No big public event was planned — in part for fear it could cause a
celebratory stampede, as a 1998 stop by President Bill Clinton
almost did.
"I can say without any fear of contradiction that all Ghanaians want
to see you. I wish it were possible for me to send you to every home
in Ghana," Mills said, underscoring the U.S. first family's
popularity that gave them Page One billing in many of the nation's
newspapers.
People lined the streets Saturday morning, many waving at every
vehicle of Obama's motorcade as it headed toward a meeting at Osu
Castle, the storied coastline presidential state house. One woman
emerged from a coffee shop to wave a tiny U.S. flag while others
sold posters and T-shirts with Obama's picture. Many billboards
lined the roads, including one that showed the president and his
wife with the greeting, "Ghana loves you."
While the people of Ghana may be in a frenzy over Obama's visit, the
president started his day with typical calm. Wearing a gray T-shirt
and gym pants, he walked through the lobby of his hotel virtually
unnoticed at 7:30 a.m. local time on his way to the downstairs gym
for a morning workout.
A short time later, his motorcade left the hotel, passed under
hovering military helicopters and arrived for a delayed welcome
ceremony. Mills greeted his counterpart and then the pair went
inside for one-on-one meetings.
Selecting Ghana as the starting point of his black Africa travels,
the president sought to highlight a continental success story.
"We think that Ghana can be an extraordinary model for success
throughout the continent," Obama told Mills before joining about 350
people for an outdoor breakfast at the castle.
Obama planned to highlight those successes during a midday speech,
urging Africans to embrace a future of accountable leaders and open
markets. To ensure a wide audience, the administration organized
events for the public to watch video of Obama's speech at embassies
and cultural centers across Africa.
But the speech was also a splash of cold water for Africans still
nursing grievances over colonial rule.
"For many years we've made excuses about corruption or poor
governance, (insisting) this was somehow the consequence of
neocolonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism," he told
AllAfrica.com last week. "I'm not a believer in excuses."
Those sentiments led Obama to avoid his father's native Kenya for
this stop. Tensions in Kenya remain high after a disputed 2007
election and subsequent ethnic bloodshed.
Later in the day, Obama planned to tour Cape Coast Castle, a seaside
fortress converted to the slave trade by the British in the 17th
century. In its dungeons, thousands of shackled Africans huddled in
squalor before being herded onto ships bound for America.
While Michelle Obama's great-great grandfather was a slave in South
Carolina, his African origins are not known.
The castle visit mirrored ones paid by Clinton and George W. Bush to
the slave-trading post of Goree Island, Senegal — with the added
impact of Obama's mixed-race background and history-making election.
In Ghana, too, Obama followed in Clinton's footsteps. In 1998, a
surging crowd cheered Clinton in Accra's Independence Square and
toppled barricades after his speech. Clinton shouted, "Back up! Back
up!", his Secret Service detail clearly frantic.
Bush's reception last year was less tumultuous, but equally warm. At
a welcoming banquet, then-President John Kufuor noted huge increases
in U.S. development aid and AIDS relief — and named a highway after
Bush. Earlier, Bush hosted Kufuor at one of his few White House
state dinners.
Obama on Saturday, however, tried for a lower profile.
"The president wanted to use this visit to shine a light on Ghana
and on what it is doing so successfully rather than on him," Obama
spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Even so, Obama said previous U.S. leaders' trips to the continent
were weeklong tours but seldom integrated into their global travel.
Obama said he wants to take an approach that shows Africa's ties to
international policies.
Obama — son of a Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas — first
toured Africa in 1992. The newly minted Harvard law school grad
savored its sights, sounds and tastes. In "Dreams from My Father,"
he recalled running his hand over his father's burial plot. "I had
sat at my father's grave and spoken to him through Africa's red
soil," he wrote.
Obama flew to Ghana after the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy,
approved a new $20 billion food security plan. It aims to help poor
nations in Africa and elsewhere avert mass starvation during the
global recession.
He also had a cordial first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. In their
half-hour private audience at the Vatican, the two reviewed Mideast
peace and anti-poverty efforts, aides reported. They also discussed
abortion and stem cell research at length, Benedict giving him a
treatise on bioethics to read while flying here, the White.
Credit: AP
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