OBAMA AND AFRICA

The news accounts of Obama in Africa indicated he spoke directly and bluntly to the issues facing Africa and said that Africans needed to get their act together when it comes to governing their countries. The media highlighted this trip back to his "roots." (He has also spoken sharply to American African-American groups about their responsibilities). America and the West is not responsible for Zimbabwe and other failures according to Obama.

But the Economist noted that President Bush said essentially the same thing. And ex-President Bush has done as much for African problems as President Obama appears to be doing.

Development depends on good governance.” Said by a white Texan dynast in Ghana, an African country once ravaged by the slave trade, that unexceptionable insight might sound a shade patronising. Said by a son of Africa whose election to the world’s most powerful post thrilled the continent, it was taken at its respectable face value. “We must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans.” In other words, throwing aid at bad governments—and Barack Obama made plain that there were still far too many of them—will not work. The president’s candour was well received.

The article also pointed out that Obama's administration has continued the same Bush policies his campaign criticized in the 2008 election campaign.

In fact, though Mr Obama did not wish to dwell on security, his biggest headaches in Africa, as for Mr Bush, do still relate to armed conflict. His worst problem is Somalia, where his closest advisers upbraided Mr Bush for worsening matters by arming Somali warlords who claimed to be fighting militant Islam. More recently, however, Mr Obama won a waiver from the UN to send arms to Somalia’s beleaguered government, which is threatened by jihadists (“terrorists”, he bluntly called them) with links to al-Qaeda. He is unlikely to let his warships or aircraft bomb jihadist strongholds in Somalia for fear of enraging the civilian population. But equally he is plainly loth to let that failed state slide further into the domain of al-Qaeda.

The deeper truth is that Africa is not high on the American president’s agenda. His Ghana speech was sensible and stirring. But in the end his message was that African-American relations would see no grand change.