President Barack Obama's visit - What's in for Africa?

President Barack Obama's visit - What's in for Africa?

Get all the latest on President Obama's first visit to Africa as President. We look behind the headlines to let you know what is in store for Africa. Stay tuned.


The question of why Barack Obama has chosen Ghana rather than Kenya, his father's homeland, or Nigeria, Africa's giant, for his first trip to Africa as President of the United States, is exercising newspapers from Nairobi to New York.

Nairobi's Daily Nation said Monday that "in skipping Kenya, the first African American president is signaling that he puts political values over ancestral allegiances."

Although the Nation quoted Kenyan foreign minister Moses Wetang'ula as denying that Obama had snubbed the country, it also referred to recent U.S. criticism of the country's struggling coalition government.

"Mr Johnnie Carson, President Obama's top Africa official, recently made a stop in Nairobi where he delivered a stern warning to President [Mwai] Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to get the reform process on track or face unspecified sanctions," the Nation reported.

In Lagos, This Day carried a harshly-worded opinion piece from 'Jibola Asolo, a Nigerian lawyer based in Britain, saying that the failure of the first black U.S. president to stop over in the world's most populous black country "should really serve as a moment of reflection for us as a nation. It should shame us as a people."

But, wrote Asolo, Obama's decision should not be a surprise.

"The reality is: on the world stage Nigeria is not ready to play ball. We, as a nation, are still stuck on stupid while other countries are buckling down and taking the issue of good governance seriously. This considered, the President of America would be hard-pressed to grace our land with his presence in light of the joke that is Project Nigeria."

In the U.S., the New York Times reinforced the African commentary.

In a report based on unnamed White House sources, it said that "A year after Kenya exploded in political violence, it remains a tense and unsettled place. Ghana, by contrast, is an outpost of democracy and civil society in a volatile region."

The Times quoted a senior official as saying that ideally Obama would have preferred a longer trip to Africa. But time constraints meant that such a trip would have to wait until later in his tenure.

"So his advisers agreed to tack the quick Ghana stop onto the end of his Russia-G-8 trip to at least get a marker down before too much time passed," said the paper.

And, in a reflection of how difficult it is to get yourself onto the agenda of an American president, the Times quoted the official as saying Ghana offered an opportunity to promote important values even on a one-night visit: "We have limited time and we tried to figure out where we could get the most out of limited time," the official said.


Credit: John Allen, allAfrica.com

Japan has come late to this second scramble for Africa—and knows it

By THE ECONOMIST (Print Edition)

THE copper is used in computers. The nickel is for batteries. Tungsten is used to fortify steel for cars. Japan buys much of its rare metal from China to feed its electronics and car industries. But as booming China has begun to close the spigot to safeguard its own supplies, Japan, the world's second biggest economy, has been forced to look elsewhere for an alternative source—in Africa.

On May 28th it hosted the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, a quadrennial event since 1993. About 40 African heads of state or government attended. Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, promised to meet each one individually, as well as Bono, a pop singer, without whom no such gathering on Africa is complete. (Continues below)


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But whereas in previous meetings aid topped the agenda, this time it has been all about the hunt for natural resources—with Africa's best interests at heart, of course. “If we are able to utilise Africa's plentiful resources more fully by harnessing Japan's technologies,” Mr Fukuda said, “this will surely be a major trigger for growth and without a doubt benefit Africa.”

This has become a familiar refrain from the leaders of Asia's other expanding economies. Japan is following firmly in the footsteps of China and India, both of which have hosted lavish African summits in the past 18 months, both of them keen to buy Africa's oil and metals.

Like the others, Japan is offering sweeteners to make itself a saucier commercial partner. This week it pledged to double aid to Africa by 2012, to $3.4 billion. It will also provide up to $4 billion in low-interest rate loans, which means easing its rules against lending to countries that have previously received debt relief.

Japanese officials stress that all this comes with no strings attached (except perhaps Africa's support for a permanent Japanese seat in the UN Security Council), a not-too-subtle hint that the country hopes to compete on an equal footing with China. Its loans are never linked to improvements in governance or human rights, unlike many of those from Europe, which hosted its own Africa summit in Portugal last December, or America. This reflects the fact that Japan has come late to this second scramble for Africa—and knows it.