America.gov (Washington, DC)
Charles Corey
9 July 2009
Washington, DC — President Obama is visiting Ghana July 10-11 as the third consecutive U.S. president to travel there because that country stands as an admirable example of strong, democratic governance and a vibrant civil society, and has achieved tremendous development progress over the past decade, a senior White House official said July 9.
Briefing reporters at the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, the senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, Michelle Gavin, said the trip also is expected to demonstrate that Africa stands as an integral part of the U.S. foreign policy vision and that Africa is "not some separate sphere that one engages in ... and has no relationship to the rest of the foreign policy agenda."
Also joining in the briefing were Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, and Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.
While in Ghana, Obama will be talking "a fair bit about governance and the importance of governance for development and the importance of integrating African voices into global debates," Gavin said.
The 24-hour visit, she said, will include "a full day of work ... starting with a bilateral meeting with President [John Atta] Mills."
According to Gavin, Obama and the first lady will visit a hospital in Accra with a focus on maternal and child health. Later that day, Obama will deliver a speech to the Ghanaian parliament. Following the speech, the president and the first lady will travel to Cape Coast Castle, a fortification used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Then they will return to Accra for a departure ceremony.
Press secretary Gibbs said an aggressive new media strategy for the Ghana visit will allow the president to speak directly to the continent.
Watch parties will be held at embassies throughout Africa. "Our ambassadors, our embassies, are very much engaged," McDonough said. "Those watch parties will range from meetings in individual embassies to broadcasts or radio broadcasts in public spaces -- movie theaters and the like."
"We're also aggressively relying on ... the expertise in our new-media operation both at the White House and at the State Department," McDonough said, to reach out to Africans using mobile phone text messaging and social network sites and encouraging questions and comments to the president about his visit to Ghana.
McDonough said there has been an intense amount of interest and the White House is "trying to find a way to engage that to the greatest extent possible."
Asked about the president's speech, Gavin said, "It's a speech about Africa, about how this administration hopes to engage with Africa, about our responsibilities [and] their responsibilities to make this partnership as productive as possible to create more opportunities for Africans."
Obama will give his speech to an audience of Ghanaian parliamentarians and others. "That's a specific choice to underscore the importance of governing institutions because, in terms of the message of the speech, a great deal of it has to do with the importance of governance, holding up some very positive African examples -- not just talking about elected officials who are doing the right things, and not just talking about elections, but civil society, civic engagement, and civic responsibility that's driving African societies forward and creating capacity for development."
"I think it's telling that as administrations have changed, power has shifted in Ghana, administrations have changed in the U.S.," Gavin said, "the bilateral relationship remains strong and the admiration for Ghana's democratic institutions remains strong."
"So the overall purpose is to highlight the importance of this issue," Gavin said, "which I think certainly will have resonance in Africa. The [African Union] has really been sort of forging ahead, commenting much more strongly than in the past on unconstitutional transfers of power, et cetera, and you do see increasingly mature and effective civil societies, different parts of the continent pushing the governance agenda forward. We want to support and strengthen those efforts."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 America.gov. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
