As all Moderate Voice readers are no doubt fully aware, this weekend, President Obama made his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since becoming President of the United States.
Below are a few of the best articles we found from the Ghanaian press about the trip.
In an article from Ghana Web, headlined Mr. Obama: It’s Time for America to Give Back to Africa, columnist Kojo Tamakloe lowers the boom by reminding the president that the CIA toppled Ghana’s beloved first post-colonial leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and writes in part:
“We fought alongside the West for freedom and to preserve its values and culture, but Westerners responded by destroying ours. Can we begin to make up for this with a bit of reparation for the millions of slaves that represented our youth and who labored to create the wealth of the ‘free world’?”
The next article, an editorial from The Ghanaian Chronicle, headlined Ghana Should ‘Cash In’ on Obama’s Visit, points out that Mr. Obama isn’t only visiting in order to return to his roots – but because Ghana has discovered large oil deposits. The editorial says in part:
“The coincidence of Ghana’s recent oil discovery of billions of barrels in reserves, and a U.S. National Intelligence Council estimate that by 2015, 25 percent of American oil imports will be derived from West Africa, can not be ignored. With the massive unpredictability of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Ghana’s stable environment offers a valuable addition.”
Then in a more hopeful but no less cold-eyed article from Modern Ghana that compares the country’s first experience in dealing with the global power of Portugal in 1498 to working with America today, Dr. Thaddeus Ulzen writes in an article headlined May Obama Herald Era of ‘Peace and Honest Dealings’:
“Today, however, it isn’t about gold, but about energy security … It is believed that significant participation by Ghana in what is described as a “distributed command” for AFRICOM – the U.S. African-Military Command – is high on Mr. Obama’s agenda. The ‘new Portugal’ needs to engage Ghana to guarantee energy security for the most powerful country in the world.”
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