President Barack Obama has embarked on a three nation (Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania) visit to Africa. He is expected to highlight the continent’s strive for democracy and well-being highlighting the achievements of Senegal’s democratic culture.
President Obama’s journey will also reach back into earlier times when Africa struggled against slavery and white domination, represented in planned visits to the island shrines of Gorée Island near Dakar, considered by some a symbol of the slave trade, and Robben Island off Cape Town, South Africa, where Mr. Mandela, along with other political prisoners, spent much of a 27-year imprisonment that ended in 1990.
President Obama called Mr. Mandela a “hero for the world,” as concern deepened in South Africa about his well-being.
President Obama’s only previous visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president was in Ghana in 2009, despite the heightened economic and strategic stakes at play on the continent, home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies and some of its security problems.
source: NYtimes, CBSnews, AP
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