US officials are aware that emerging economic opportunities and energy resources in Africa have attracted a clutch of interest from rising rivals.
Washington noticed that new Chinese President Xi Jinping professed a “sincere friendship” with Africa when he visited the continent on his first foreign tour.
There is one glaring missing stop on Obama’s itinerary: Kenya, the homeland of his late father.
In an unusual intervention in a foreign election, Obama in February urged the people of Kenya to avoid a repeat of violence that killed more than 1,000 people after 2007 polls.
That violence led to the indictment of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, making it politically impossible for Obama to pay an evocative trip to Kenya on this tour.
The president will stop first in Senegal, where he will meet President Macky Sall and pay an emotive visit to Goree Island and a museum and memorial to Africans caught up in the slave trade.
Then he will move onto Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 29, and the next day will hold talks and a press conference with President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria.
Later, Obama will hold a town hall meeting with young Africans at the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg.
On June 30, Obama will move onto Cape Town where his events include a visit to Mandela’s jail cell on Robben Island and a roundtable with business leaders which will include senior members of the president’s economic team.
The final leg of Obama’s journey will take him to Tanzania, where his program includes talks and a press conference with President Jakaya Kikwete and a visit to the Ubungo power plant.
Obama will also lay a wreath at a memorial to 11 people killed in the US embassy bombing in 1998.
About The Author
