By Jonathan Clayton and Tristan McConnell | Times Online
Barack Obama, Kenya’s most famous son, may have a deep attachment to his ancestral homeland but he is not letting emotions rule his head. On his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since his election, he has snubbed his father’s birthplace by choosing to go to Ghana.
The Kenyan Government and its notoriously corrupt and quarrelsome ministers are not happy. On the other side of the continent in West Africa, however, Ghanaians are jubilant that America’s first black President has chosen their country for what they see as his first real visit to Africa, dismissing his recent speech in Cairo as a staged event for the Middle East.
When President Obama touches down in Accra, the capital, today the country will erupt in one party. Posters of the President and his wife, Michelle, hang from every lamppost and advertising hoarding, and street vendors are doing a brisk trade in wristbands, T-shirts, flags and posters.
“Everyone is very proud,” said Joseph Agyiri, an IT specialist. “The streets will be packed and our best drummers and dancing groups will be there. We will give him a welcome like nowhere else in the world has done.”
Kenya has been left to ponder what might have been. In the heady days of Mr Obama’s ascent to the White House, politicians — particularly those from the Luo tribe of his late father — had envisioned an African-style “special relationship”.
Kenya’s elite whispered of preferential trade and investment deals, increased business opportunities and an image-boosting first visit to their country by an incumbent US president. Instead, relations have deteriorated, with Kenya receiving regular dressing-downs for its failure to follow reforms recommended by an international inquiry into a flawed poll in 2007, which led to the deaths of about 1,500 people in post-election violence.
In May, Jakaya Kikwete, the President of Tanzania, Kenya’s neighbour and regional competitor, had the honour of becoming the first African head of state to be received in the Oval Office. Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister, who once joked that if a Luo failed to make “State House, we will still get White House”, was received only by Administration officials. Yesterday Kofi Annan, the former UN SecretaryGeneral and the mediator of Kenya’s poll crisis, handed over a list of key suspects in the post-election violence to the International Criminal Court. It is known to include several top politicians and allies of the President and Prime Minister.
Last week President Obama spoke of his worries about recent developments in Kenya. “I’m concerned about how the political parties do not seem to be moving into a permanent reconciliation that would allow the country to move forward,” he said.
He will be the third consecutive US President to visit Ghana, which has just had a peaceful transfer of power after a close presidential election. In contrast, the Kenyan crisis has its roots in decades of high-level graft, mismanagement and exploitation of tribal tensions. President Obama has made it clear that historical ties count for little compared with his aim of encouraging political reform and rewarding good governance, democracy and accountability.
Not all Kenyans are put out by his decision. In Nairobi, Charles Analo, a 53-year-old chef, said: “Here, what the common people chose was not what we got. Everyone expected him to come to Kenya first. Now our politicians are feeling ashamed that he is not coming.”
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