Reporting from Accra, Ghana — The White House's choice of Ghana as President Obama's only port of call in sub-Saharan Africa this week has triggered envy across the continent.
The visit, his first to Africa since becoming president, is also being interpreted as a snub to those African governments with particularly poor records of corruption, administration and tainted elections.
"It makes sense that Obama would want to go to Ghana. Because Ghana is everything we are not," wrote journalist Ayisha Osori in the Nigerian daily This Day. "Ghana is a shiny example of a West African country which has turned itself around and is doing well."
Was Ghana chosen because it has slashed its poverty rate nearly in half? Or for its successive democratic changes of government without a shot being fired? Or perhaps its yet-to-be exploited oil in a region where petroleum riches have encouraged the rise of corrupt, venal elites?
"It's a little bit of recognition of Ghana's progress in democratic growth, peaceful electoral turnover, especially in a region otherwise full of reversals and disappointments," said E. Gyimah-Boadi, head of the Accra-based Center for Democratic Development.
Politically stable, Ghana stands out in a chaotic neighborhood. Nigeria, the regional oil power, has been hit by frequent militant attacks, pipeline explosions and kidnappings. Kenya, the homeland of Obama's late father, was rocked by violence after a disputed presidential election in 2007; more than 1,000 people were killed.
Ghana, with a population of 23.8 million, has become a regional leader since its transition from military rule to a multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. Its democratic advance contrasts with a history of coups and disputed elections elsewhere in Africa.
"People are coming to understand what democracy is," said Emmanuel Akli, editor of the independent Chronicle newspaper. "We are in a volatile region, and it's only Ghana that is really practicing democracy. It's the only country which has changed government twice without a single incident."
Ghana's economic growth has averaged more than 5% since 2001, according to World Bank statistics, although the country has been hit hard recently by the global recession. Its poverty rate has been halved to 28% in 2006 from 52% in 1992, according to the World Bank.
