It was an election of superlatives: the longest campaign season ever-running into two years; the most expensive election ever-around US $3billion;

the first election in which a black man tussled with a white woman for the right to represent a major party's ticket; the first woman ever nominated onto the Republican ticket; the first election in which a black man had a real shot at getting into White House proper; the largest voter turnout in 50 years; you can go on and on, and you'd still not completely capture what has just happened in the United States. We've not yet even talked about the enthusiasts.

With the possible exception of Michelle, Malia-Ann and Natasha Obama (spouse and daughters), Barack Obama's most involved, and certainly most loquacious supporters, have been in Kenya and generally across sub-Saharan Africa.

There is historical, ancestral and emotional attachment to Obama. His father, Barack Obama Snr. was a Kenyan native who scored on several fronts while on a study tour in the United States (an Economics degree from the University of Hawaii; a quick courtship and marriage to Ann Dunham; an even quicker divorce; another Economics degree from Harvard University), before returning to Kenya in 1965, and allowing drink and bitterness to consume his life. He died in 1982-poor and broken.

To understand the historical significance of Obama's resounding victory over Republican rival John Sidney McCain, consider that ALL 42 former POTUS (Presidents of the United States), and the incumbent 43rd, have been white men dating back to 1789. Not just white men either. The Catholic John F. Kennedy (35th POTUS 1961-63) excepted, all have been WASPs-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men! Not even Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her famous last name, her gender, or her readiness to immediately become Commander-in-Chief (supposedly on the strength of sharing Bill's White House bed for eight years in the 90s), could deny Obama. One would have expected a white woman, not a black man, to be the first to break through the glass ceiling.

So those of us who admire America for its diversity-(black, yellow, white, brown, etc), its technological prowess (Apple, Bose, IBM, etc), its creative genius (Steven Spielberg, Jimi Hendrix, Oliver Stone, etc), or the sheer size of its economy-have to feel good about Obama's story.

We should however, be careful not to count our White House eggs too soon. Obama is a new type of US politician who will not be making too many ethnic back-passes. It is not for nothing that he has been described as a post-racial American politician who defies pigeon-holing. Obama's middle name is Hussein, yet he's not a Muslim. Obama's father was a black Kenyan, his mother a white woman and he was largely reared by a white grandmother. Obama didn't grow up rich, yet he got into Columbia and Harvard, two Ivy League universities favoured by the well-heeled. Obama's Harvard law degree opened up possibilities for a lucrative career as a corporate lawyer, yet he worked for peanuts as a community organiser in Chicago.

Think, also, that no black candidate has ever run for high office in America without associating with the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton; or other prominent African Americans in the US public sphere. The two reverends certainly seem to have cornered the market of Black consciousness in America, and were needled to no end that Obama not only ignored them, but actively distanced himself from their "victim" rhetoric.

After he'd humiliated Senator Clinton in the Democratic primaries, conventional wisdom had it that Obama would play it safe and pick her [as she too expected], to be his running mate.

Obama ignored convention wisdom and instead picked Joe Biden, a long-serving US senator who strengthened the foreign policy credentials of the ticket, but whose mouth has occasionally got him into trouble.

Against all comers, Obama chose to be mild and unthreatening, the complete anti-thesis of angry black men (2Pac, Malcom X. , Mike Tyson, 50 Cent, even Dr. Martin Luther King!)

When he has been needled or baited, Obama has turned the other cheek, keenly conscious of how race was so obviously the elephant in the American living room. He eloquently stuck to the issues. Against Clinton, his constant refrain was simple: "She voted for the war in Iraq-I didn't!" You know how Democrats hate President George W. Bush for starting that war. Against McCain, the lines have been: Bill Clinton's "it's the economy stupid!" and "voting McCain four more years of George W. Bush". You know how fed up of Dubya Americans have been.

Obama was of course blessed to run in 2008-a year that will go down in history as perhaps the beginning of the end of US hegemony in everything financial. During 2008, General Motors lost its status as the World's No. 1 carmaker to Toyota; several marquee Wall Street banks collapsed; Americans raked in more than $1 trillion in debt to the Chinese (the consensus next superpower); and comical state interventions to save the economy made USA Inc. look more socialist than the USSR ever did.

Throughout the campaigns, Obama projected more intelligence, more eloquence and more sure-footedness, while McCain looked every one of his long 72 years, with much of his rhetoric also reinforcing the view of a man with a great future behind him. In the end though, even these superficial differences didn't matter. Obama had been chosen by destiny.

So, should we also start drafting our chits to the big black man in the big White House as we pop champagne?

Not just yet.

All the ethnic jingoism bubbling up across the continent will probably be for nothing, recent "allegations" that Uganda will be on top of Obama's African agenda notwithstanding.

Just as he has shunned controversial black reverends, misogynistic rappers, tattooed basketball players-basically anyone not named Oprah Winfrey-Obama will probably avoid an African tour for now. There are simply too many problems back home (USA Inc. not Nakuru!) to waste time with a continent that stops and starts and then stops as much as Africa does.

So let's dance; and try to realise our own African dreams. On our own!

Simwogerere Kyazze, The author is interested in public affairs.