Washington, DC — President George Bush will make a six-day trip to Africa in January, his first visit to the continent as President of the United States.
A White House announcement said the president will be in Africa from January 10 - 17 and will open the second U.S.-subSaharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum in Mauritius. The meeting is mandated by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which was passed by Congress in 2000.
The purpose is "to continue to build America's partnership with the continent," the brief statement said. No itinerary has been announced, but advance teams have been on the ground in several countries for weeks. The governments making preparations to receive Bush include Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, along with Mauritius, the island nation in the Indian Ocean.
Jimmy Carter was the first American president to make an official African visit. Bill Clinton made tours in 1998 and 2000. Carter's trip was to Nigeria, where he was hosted by Olusegun Obasanjo, a military leader preparing to hand power to an elected civilian successor and now the elected president in the midst of a tough re-election campaign.
In contrast to the pomp and ceremony that characterized those trips, the White House has limited the ceremonial aspects of Bush's tour. Instead of an entourage of business and religious leaders, Bush will be accompanied by a small party of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The first AGOA forum was held in Washington in October 2001 and included trade, foreign affairs, and finance ministers from 35 Sub-Saharan African countries deemed eligible under the legislation for trade preferences. This year's gathering will include a meeting of ministers, which will take place at the University of Mauritius, as well as a parallel private sector workshop, which is expected to draw 600 participants from eligible countries and the United States.
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The planned stops in Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa are indications of the importance the administration attaches to those countries. Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and a leading supplier of oil to the United States. South Africa has the largest economy on the continent and, since the end of apartheid, has taken a leading role in, among other areas, conflict resolution in such places as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. President Bush is expected to meet with both President Thabo Mbeki and his predecessor, Nelson Mandela.
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade is a leading advocate of economic and political reform and current chairman of the association of West African nations known as Ecowas, which is trying to resolve civil strife in Cote d'Ivoire that threatens to destabilize the entire sub-region. The Senegalese leader won favor from the administration when he hosted an anti-terrorism summit of African leaders a few weeks after September 11, 2001.
Bush will arrive in Kenya just weeks after that country's December 27 election to choose a successor to President Daniel Arap Moi, who has been in office for 24 years. The focus of the visit, which will not include an overnight stop, is the opening of a new American embassy to replace the one destroyed by a bomb in 1998.
This will not be George Bush's first trip to Africa. He visited Gambia in 1990 on behalf of his father, President George Bush, to attend a special celebration marking the country's 25 years of independence.
