Africa Welcomes Obama

Photo: TouringGhana.com

Barack Obama chose well for the venue of his first sub-Saharan Africa visit as President.  Ghana, as the BBC's Martin Plaut writes, "ticks all the boxes"

Not only is Ghana clearly democratic, but it has some of the African oil on which the US increasingly depends, and there is the symbolic link with slavery, from which so many African-Americans trace their heritage.

Plus Ghanaians deserve to be put forward as a model for other Africans who live in countries not quite as enlightened.  Their country's reputation was not always quite as positive as it has been in recent years.

(Photo, Ghanaian slave "castle" Fort Good Hope, 2005)

The public diplomacy people who helped prepare this inaugural trip had an inspired thought when they invited Africans' comments, which have been pouring in by SMS, email, etc.  Using the best texting shorthand, this is one of my favorites:

Dear Mr President B Obama! Welcome 2 Africa! Congrats 4 ur election! N greetings n blessings 2 ur family! Wat will b ur new foreign policy towards z Islands of SWest of Indian Ocean including Diego Garcia ? Take care ! All z best n God bless!
Mauritius

Actually, I have been wondering the same thing (about Diego Garcia and its exiled inhabitants).

Presidents have very limited time on these foreign trips, and the Obamas are fortunate to be able to visit the Cape Coast Castle, much more spectacular than my little castle here, which has been turned into a very modest hotel (possibly brothel) on a seldom-visited part of Ghana's coast.

Too bad they don't have enough time to make a pilgrimage in Accra to the final resting place of W.E.B. Du Bois, the African-American writer and one of the founders of the NAACP, who decided to settle in the newly-independent Ghana of Kwame Nkrumah in the late 1950s early Sixties.

I will be listening to the President's speech, to be broadcast live on the BBC.  Stay tuned for comment.