Barack Obama was always assured of a rousing welcome when he visited Ghana for two days last weekend. Venerated in popular songs (Blakk Rasta's catchy "Barack Obama" tune comes to mind), Obama even made a turn in recent presidential elections in that country.
Opposition candidate,John Atta Mills, not only ran on "an agenda of change," but also produced posters where Obama is presented as Mills' vice-presidential running mate. Mills is now the country's President.
Yet despite his star status on the continent, Africa had not been high on Obama agenda for obvious reasons. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea, the financial crisis, and a full domestic agenda, still take up much of his energy.
But Obama had not neglected Africa altogether: Once he was inaugurated, he quickly (by Washington standards) appointed a Special Envoy for Sudan (a retired military officer with deep experience in the region) and a new Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (who has some cachet among progressives).
Then he welcomed Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to the White House, perhaps signaling Obama's disdain for Zimbabwe's controversial President, Robert Mugabe.
Obama and the White House was quick to frame the visit. And they largely succeeded in that task. They emphasized Ghana's political stability as the main reason for the choice. (In December 2008, Mills was elected after the incumbent, John Kufuor, conceded a close result.) If Obama wanted to send a message, he certainly got the result: In Kenya, his father's homeland, elites are embarrassed by a perceived snub. Rigged elections in 2007 led to murderous violence and displaced ten of thousands of people, resulting in a coalition government characterized by paralysis and recriminations.
The same goes for Nigeria, the largest democracy in West Africa. Nigeria has been a longtime, and loyal, US ally in West Africa and expected the new President to visit their country first.
But periodically rigged elections and endemic corruption did not help their case. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka approves the Obama strategy: "If Obama decides to grace Nigeria with his presence, I will stone him. The message he is sending by going to Ghana is so obvious, is so brilliant that he must not render it flawed by coming to Nigeria any time soon."
Technically this was Obama's first visit to an African country-in early June he gave a major speech in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. Egypt is,however, culturally and politically part of the Middle East, so the visit to Ghana carried much symbolism. (The visit to the slave fortress at Cape Coast and his remarks about his grandfather in his speech to Ghanaian parliamentarians made those connections.)
Post-war US presidents have consistently treated African politics with contempt. Dwight Eisenhower sent his deputy Richard Nixon to represent the US at Ghana's inaugural independence celebrations in 1957.
Lyndon Johnson proved a staunch supporter of the racist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa, while Ronald Reagan invited a slew of dictators and kleptocrats to the White House. Jimmy Carter was the first American President to travel to an independent African country, visiting Liberia and Nigeria in 1978.
George H.W. Bush followed with a short trip to Somalia. In 1998, Bill Clinton, also starting in Ghana, took what is still the most extensive presidential trip to modern Africa in 1998: six countries in 12 days. And George W. Bush made two multi-country trips to Africa proving, ironically,to be quite interested in the continent, though with mixed results. But even he found out on a farewell African tour last year, that Africans-both ordinary people and governing elites-are eager to do business with Obama.
The trip was billed as one and a half days, but it amounted to no more than a day. Obama also had a full program, so it was unrealistic to expect that serious business was going to be done. Truth to be told, nothing Obama said was .
African governments get that message from its many critics--whether donors, the major international financial institutions (read the World Bank), and Western governments--fairly regularly. Instead, I felt that the regional context for the visit got lost in the hoopla of large crowds and ceremony.
West Africa is an unstable region. Coups in Mauritania, Guinea, the death of lifetime President Omar Bongo in Gabon (a major oil producer), and a tenuous settlement between the government and rebels in Côte d'Ivoire currently serving together in a coalition government, demand urgent attention. So do ongoing wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in northern Uganda. Further north Somalia's weak government is barely holding out against Islamists and Al Qaeda in North Africa has intensified its attacks.
Questions also remain as to whether an Obama Administration will try to pursue George W Bush's attempts to establish a larger, coordinated American presence on the continent through the US African Command (or AFRICOM). African countries were dead-set against hosting such a military presence and AFRICOM currently operates from Germany. What will the Obama White House's relation be to the African Union and with African governments' insistence that they police conflicts and peace treaties instead?
The AU wants a greater role in peacekeeping on the continent, but lack resources.
Finally, there's the small matter of energy politics. Ghana has just discovered oil off its coast; an estimated 6 million barrels. (Voice of America reports that along with natural gas, the International Monetary Fund predicts that the field alone could earn Ghana as much as $20 billion by the year 2030.) The US already sources 30% of its oil supply from Nigeria. Will Ghana, with its more stable government, present a more attractive oil source for the US intend on minimizing its dependence on Middle East oil sources?
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