Barack Obama, & Africa

OBAMA FOR USA. On July 11, in an address televised across Africa -- his father's often-troubled home continent -- President Obama brought a message of tough love: American aid must be matched by Africa's responsibility for its own problems.

"We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans," Mr. Obama said in Ghana, on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president. For all its previous sins, he said, "the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants." To build a prosperous future, he said, Africa needs to shed corruption and tyranny and take on poverty and disease.

The visit of the first African-American president, the son of a onetime Kenyan goat herder, electrified Ghana and much of the region. Thousands of people lined streets, crowded rooftops, packed balconies, climbed trees, leaned out windows, even hung off scaffolding to glimpse his motorcade.