NigeriansTalk

A ven­dor sits in his street kiosk — Luc Gnago/Reuters

I intended to boy­cott the media frenzy on Obama´s sec­ond visit to Africa as over 25,000 chil­dren died around the world on the same day but “We don’t need Obama to show us how to make Kenya a great coun­try” by Bar­rack Muluka writ­ing in Nairobi’s Stan­dard put a stop to that fool­ish­ness. His rant, “we would not crave a visit by some for­eigner whose exis­tence we did not even know of ten years ago”. Else­where expec­ta­tions were enor­mously high as the White House made sure Inter­net and mobile phone users around the world got involved with the visit to Ghana using Face and Twit!

The impor­tance of Pres­i­dent Obama’s visit to Ghana was not lost on the folks at Google as they teamed up with the Min­istry of Tourism in Ghana to cre­ate a spe­cial site for Pres­i­dent Obama’s visit. Shame the  ajax.googleapis.com appli­ca­tion was awfully slow but the num­bers game showed Obama was the only party on the web. Main­stream media not to be out­done con­tributed an overkill of ana­lysts but with­out any wor­thy of men­tion as blogs took the play and the debate con­tin­ues today.

There were many one line con­dem­na­tions of Obama’s shal­low and sim­plis­tic speech from a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple includ­ing Niger­ian Lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana who thought it was a huge embar­rass­ment to the African con­ti­nent and black peo­ple. But the Glar­ing Omis­sion on Niger­ian Curios­ity proved quite pop­u­lar with a lot of thought pro­vok­ing com­ments.  The updated ver­sion clar­i­fied that “Obama could freely ‘scold’ Africa, he neglected to acknowl­edge the his­tor­i­cal role played by Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and even cer­tain busi­nesses in cre­at­ing some of the prob­lems Africa now faces.”

Solomonsydelle’s theme is repeated  in Obama’s Ghana Speech Under whelms on Glob­alVoices. Non seule­ment que l’Afrique est le dernier con­ti­nent qu’il vis­ites mal­gre ses orig­ines, per­haps they should have left out the cringe-worthy label, Obama Africa. I also enjoyed Obama In Nige­ria, Oh Sorry, Ghana! on Naira­land, “I guess he doesn’t want to be kid­napped  by Mil­i­tants” a com­ment quipped.

“After the illus­tri­ous son of Africa, Barack Obama has left Ghana on the July 12, 2009; I decided to call him because the ser­mon he deliv­ered to Ghana­ians and Africans was too far beyond my com­pre­hen­sion. As a mat­ter of fact, he gave me enough time and this was what ensued between us. That was how “Com­ment: My Tele­phone Con­ver­sa­tion with Obama!” by Joy Online’s Abdu­lai Hanan R. Con­fi­dence who went over the speech line by line. “So, is that the rea­son why you chose Ghana because we have just dis­cov­ered oil? Or the Africom mat­ters?” Highly recommended!

For Richard B. Muham­mad, “Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s pil­grim­age to Africa’s first mod­ern inde­pen­dent nation may be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant trips to the con­ti­nent by any U.S. polit­i­cal fig­ure”, how­ever, Pres­i­dent patron­iz­ing was how Niger­ian social jus­tice activist and blog­ger saw the visit in nibl. Sokari Ekine aka Black Looks, pointed out the con­tra­dic­tions in Obama’s denial of the destruc­tive role of the West played in Africa. Sokari also revealed that the Ghana speech lacked sub­stance in her review on Pam­bazuka News.

The enor­mous his­toric and sym­bolic visit was reduced to Obama: Ghana’s Gain, Nigeria’s loss by Ghana Pun­dit who added that For­mer Lagos State Gov­er­nor Bola Tin­ubu also lis­tened to Obama speak.  Not the mir­a­cle speech and I was almost annoyed with the belly­ach­ing was how Akín began but con­cluded that the speech struck the right bal­ance. Pres­i­dent Obama in Ghana. Why not Nige­ria? by Ghana based Niger­ian blog­ger and web entre­pre­neur – Olu­niyi David Ajao added that “The Pres­i­dent of the United States is at lib­erty to decide which coun­tries to visit or not to visit, and in what order he vis­its them.”

Is Obama Africa’s sav­iour? by Reuter’s Mpho Majoro fin­ished with the ques­tion com­mon to most of blogshere. But should Africans in any case be look­ing to Obama — or any­one from out­side — to solve the continent’s prob­lems? Or is there more that Africans should be doing them­selves to improve their lives? In the end, are we still bit­ter or have we learnt some­thing from this tech Savvy Obama Ghana speech in Eng­lish, French, Swahili, Ara­bic and Por­tuguese? Thanks to all the con­trib­u­tors but did the mes­sage get home? How many African coun­tries are plan­ning to sow the seeds of infor­ma­tion using technology?

In 1985, around 85,000 peo­ple vis­ited the trop­i­cal coun­try; that num­ber has now sky­rock­eted to around 600,000. In June of this year, the Ghana Tourist Board launched a pro­mo­tional ini­tia­tive with the aim of attract­ing 1 mil­lion annual vis­i­tors by the end of 2012. — Forbes.com — Obama Went To Ghana. Should You?

To those that missed the per­for­mance, A New Moment of Promise in Africa is at the White House, USA.