The much-talked about visit of the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, to Ghana has come and gone, but not without commentaries on different aspects regarding the first visit of the first Black US President to sub-Saharan Africa.

Obama's address to the Ghanaian Parliament was certainly full of oratorical skills for which the US president is widely recognized. But it was also replete with home truths that his audience on the African continent would find useful to ponder over. Africa and indeed the developing world no doubt welcomed the election of Obama, who overcame centuries of discrimination and overcame the odds to emerge as the first Black President of the most powerful nation on earth. This, coupled with the early visit just six months after taking office, represented a remarkable shift in the order of priority that US administrations had routinely accorded the continent; it also suggests some grounds to hope that the new government in Washington may alter its hitherto low-priority rating of the continent, and thus change the course for the better in its relations with African nations.

The important issues raised in the speech capture the African reality as we experience them today. In fact, we recognise most if not all of the political, social and development challenges that confront the people and the government. That is why we do not believe that we require an outsider, even those with heritage rooted here, to tell us what we have really become: an embarrassment to the rest of the world. In plain language, that was precisely Mr Obama's message to the continent, pointedly at its leaders. For years, virtually every African leader, from Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, to Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to General Murtala Mohammed, has repeated the mantra that Africa's problems can only be solved by Africans themselves. So Obama actually said nothing new in Accra when he remarked that Africa's problems can only be resolved and must be resolved in Africa by Africans. We hope that our current leaders got Obama's real message, which is that Africa should henceforth not look towards the US to bail it out of situations that the continent's leaders can resolve themselves.

On the other hand the catalogue of problems afflicting the continent, such as corruption, tyranny and sit-tight attitude of the leadership, and the failure to build institutions, as eloquently captured in the speech is as true today as they were when the Americans sought to and did accentuate them. The debate here is whether the culpability of the United States official involvement over time in installing the continent's post-independence dictators is not a major factor Obama has complained about. To his credit, Obama did acknowledge, in passing, the unsavoury role that the US has played in some of the continent's bloodiest conflicts. The American CIA spy agency is known to have installed and propped up dictators like Congo's Mobuto Sese-seko, and then murder of the elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba; and Liberia's Charles Taylor, in spite of documented evidence that he was fuelling the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone; sustaining apartheid in South Africa; supporting murderous movements like Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola; even Ghana was a secret CIA listening before it was exposed and station dismantled; there are several other instances of America's dark past in its dealings with Africa among others.

What Africa needs is a new policy in the handling of and resolution of crisis in parts of the continent. A policy devoid of creating avenues for dumping and testing of weapons on the continent, and of instigating conflicts and selling arms to all sides involved in them. This must change, and instead new initiatives in the resolution of conflicts in Darfur, Somalia, the Congo among others should form part of the attention of the new government. President Obama's speech was a mirror for especially African leaders to take a look at themselves in, and see if they like what they see or have an idea of how the rest of the world is looking at them. We are confident that they did not like what they see, but won't admit it. And that encapsulates the continent's problems: leaders who know that what they are is wrong but are incapable or unwilling to change course, until the people, when they can rise above suppression, revolt.


Source: Daily Trust/Nigeria