U.S. President Barack Obama met Ghana's democratically elected president Saturday on a visit to Africa that will emphasize his message on the importance of good governance and accountability.It is Obama's first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since he took office as the first African American president of the United States.Obama and Mills shook hands as they met outside the presidential palace and stood side by side while a military band played the U.S. and Ghanaian national anthems. The leaders then inspected a military honor guard.Ghana was chosen because it symbolizesan Africa different to the old images of war, misery and corruption. President John Atta Mills was elected in a peaceful, transparent vote last December that set an example for the continent.
And although he acknowledged the conflicts that dominate news reports from the continent, by far his emphasis was on the subject of improving African democracies and rooting out official corruption.
Rather than visiting his father's home of Kenya, which saw intense postelection violence, Obama decided to visit Ghana -- saying he wanted to draw attention to the country's history of free elections and peaceful transfer of power between opposition parties.
On a stage draped with kente cloth, Obama spoke briefly of violence in Congo, Somalia and Darfur, Sudan, and promised the U.S. will support those who "stand up to inhumanity in our midst."
"It is never justifiable to target innocents in the name of ideology," he said. "It is the death sentence of a society to force children to kill in wars. It is the ultimate mark of criminality and cowardice to condemn women to relentless and systematic rape. We must bear witness to the value of every child in Darfur and the dignity of every woman in Congo."
But the president did not dwell on what he called the "crude caricature of a continent at war." He spoke of how his grandfather was a cook for the British in Kenya and, though a respected elder in his village, was called "boy" by his employers for much of his life.
But colonialism isn't responsible for all of Africa's problems, Obama said.
"In my father's life, it was partly tribalism and patronage in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career," he said, "and we know that this kind of corruption is a daily fact of life for far too many."
Later, Obama and his family visited the Cape Coast Castle, a major port where Africans were once shipped off into slavery.
The castle stands on the western coast of Africa, a sprawling compound with dark dungeons where captives lived in sweltering heat with only tiny vents to let in fresh air.
"It is reminiscent of the trip I took to Buchenwald (concentration camp)," Obama said, "because it reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil." Still, he called it the first step on the journey that is the African-American experience.
"As painful as it is," he said, "it helps to teach all of us that we have to do what we can to fight against the kinds of evils that sadly still exist in our world, not just on this continent but in every corner of the globe."
