Back to his roots ... Obama starts his tour

Visit will stress US interest in Africa

AMERICA’S first black president Barack Obama acknowledged the historic stain of slavery and honoured Senegal’s democratic resilience in an unstable region yesterday, at the start of his African tour.

Obama stepped off Air Force One into the African night late on Wednesday in Dakar to launch a three-nation trip designed to fulfil neglected expectations for his presidency on a continent where he has deep ancestral roots.

Obama began his day yesterday with talks and a press conference with Senegal President Macky Sall. He will also discuss the importance of the rule of law at Senegal’s Supreme Court.

A “full circle” moment then beckoned as Obama, the son of a Kenyan, and his wife Michelle, the descendent of slaves, were due to visit Goree Island, a memorial to Africans swept up in the Atlantic slave trade.

Obama was travelling by ferry to the island’s Slave House museum, off the Senegal coast, which epitomises a dark period of American and African history resonating on both sides of the Atlantic to this day.

“There’s this link between Obama, an American originating from Africa through his father, and his wife, an African-American originating from Africa through her ancestors,” said House of Slaves curator Eloi Coly.

White House spokesman Jay Carney described the visit as an important moment for Obama. “A visit like this by an American president, any American president, is powerful,” he told reporters.

“[For Obama] I’m sure particularly so, given that he is African American.”

US officials are keen to highlight democracy, in Muslim majority Senegal, on the first leg of a visit focusing on Francophone west Africa, the tip of the continent in South Africa, and the democratic west in Tanzania.

Obama is expected to discuss the situation in neighbouring Mali, before a UN peacekeeping force starts operations in a country where Islamists and radicals have exploited a power vacuum.

The US president’s arrival in Africa came at a delicate time as the world prepared to say a farewell to Nelson Mandela. Obama and Mandela met in 2005, when the former SA president was in Washington, and Obama was a newly elected senator, and the two have spoken several times since by telephone. But the long awaited prospect of a public appearance between the first black presidents of South Africa and the United States is now impossible.

Obama claims a spiritual connection to Africa, but a crush of international crises in his first term thwarted his hopes to travel extensively in the continent. He did manage a short trip to Ghana in 2009.

His tour is designed to highlight Africa’s emerging economic potential and growing middle class, as well as youth and health programmes, and to emphasise US engagement in a region benefiting from a wave of Chinese investment.

“We are not too late,” said Carney, pointing out that although Obama had been kept away, Vice-President Joe Biden visited Africa in the first term, and there were also wide ranging diplomatic efforts. But there has been disappointment in Africa, after Obama’s 2008 election caused euphoria and an expectation that he would put Africa policy at the top of his agenda.

Kenya is not included in Obama’s itinerary.

Officials said the indictment of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, over previous election violence, made it politically impossible for Obama to stop by on this tour. — Sapa-AFP