With every one of President Barack Obama’s trips to Africa, he has seemed keen to make a historic statement. His debut, a visit to Cairo , was meant to start a new phase in US-Arab relations after the grave misunderstandings seen during the presidency of George W Bush. The visit to Ghana soon afterwards was no less significant — the nation became in 1957 the first sub-Saharan African country to gain its independence, and is the most stable democracy in west Africa. Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa followed in 2013.
Mr Obama’s fourth visit to Africa, in July, was the first time a serving US president would visit either Kenya or Ethiopia. With Kenya, there was the added significance of a homecoming: his father was born in the country and died there. Indeed, in one of the president’s speeches there, he described himself as “the first Kenyan-American to be president of the United States”.
China has been paying attention; along with the US, it is a frontrunner in the race for economic and diplomatic influence on the continent. It overtook America as Africa’s largest trading partner in Mr Obama’s first year in office. That might have been on Hillary Clinton’s mind when, in Senegal as secretary of state in 2012, she said: “The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over in the 21st century”. Today it is Beijing being snarky, with state news agency Xinhua deriding Mr Obama for “playing the family card”.