BARACK OBAMA IN GHANA

US President Barack Obama has begun his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, with talks with Ghana’s President John Atta Mills.

The US president is to deliver a speech outlining his hope that good governance can flourish across the continent.

Ghana was chosen as the first, historic destination for the president’s visit because of its democratic record.

Mr Obama will also visit a former slave castle with his wife, Michelle, a descendant of African slaves.

People have poured into the capital, Accra, for a glimpse of the president during his 24-hour stay in Ghana.

Mr Obama arrived in the capital late on Friday, fresh from a G8 summit in Italy where the world’s eight most powerful nations agreed on a $20bn (£12.3bn) fund to bolster agriculture – the main source of income for many sub-Saharan Africans.

Just before leaving for the Ghanian capital, Accra, he said: “There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food”.

Mr Obama, who visited Egypt in early June, said Ghana had been chosen for the visit because of its strong track record of democracy and stability.

“Part of the reason that we’re travelling to Ghana is because you’ve got there a functioning democracy, a president who’s serious about reducing corruption and you’ve seen significant economic growth.”

The BBC’s Will Ross says Mr Obama will find it a challenge in the current economic climate to match some of the achievements of his predecessor, George W Bush, when it comes to health care in Africa, especially in the fight against HIV.

The visit to the slave fort at Cape Coast Castle will be a poignant moment for the country’s first African-American president and for his wife Michelle, whose ancestors are believed to have come from West Africa, our correspondent says.

Posters of Barack and Michelle Obama are to be seen everywhere in Accra, where their arrival was eagerly awaited.

The White House reported that over 5,000 Africans had sent text message to the US president ahead of the visit.

On arrival, President Obama and his family were met by President Atta Mills, and treated to a colourful welcome featuring drummers and traditional dancers.

Ghanaian musicians have written songs to mark the visit and it is clear that millions of Ghanaians would love to see Mr Obama, our correspondent says.

However, there will be few opportunities for them to do so during his 24-hour stay.

When former President Bill Clinton came more than a decade ago, he addressed hundreds of thousands of cheering Ghanaians.

But post-9/11, security is tighter and all events are for invited guests only, our correspondent notes.

Barack Obama visited sub-Saharan Africa while a US senator, making a trip to Kenya – his father’s homeland – in August 2006. Cape Coast, a town about 160km (100 miles) west of Accra, has even suspended funerals on account of Mr Obama’s impending visit to its old slave fort.

“We banned all funeral activities in Cape Coast because we want to give a befitting welcome to the US president,” Ghana’s central regional minister, Ama Benyiwaa Doe, told AFP news agency.

“The dead can be buried later but Obama is here for once and we must pay all attention to him.”

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MBEKI: AU YET TO TAKE A STANCE ON ICC

An African Union (AU) panel led by South Africa’s former President Thabo Mbeki said it had not taken a stance on an international court’s indictment of Sudanese officials including President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Fighting between the government, its allies and a myriad of rebel groups in Sudan’s western region has claimed as many as 300,000 people, according to the United Nations, but Khartoum says only 10,000 have died since clashes broke out in 2003.

“The panel has not taken a position whether or not the intervention of the (International Criminal Court) in Sudan or the arrest warrants the court has issued are appropriate,” it said in a statement.

The ICC has indicted Bashir on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and torture.

He has dismissed the allegations as part of a Western conspiracy, and the AU has sought a deferment of the indictment, saying it has complicated peace efforts in Darfur.

An AU summit in Libya last week voted to suspend cooperation with ICC in the matter.

Mbeki told reporters on Friday that his panel of eight eminent Africans had consulted widely inside and outside Sudan.

“The consensus reached is that those charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity should appear in court and defend themselves,” he said. “The warrant has been issued. There is nothing that can be done.”

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RAJOELINA MAY PARDON RAVALOMANANA

Madagascar’s army-backed president has said he could pardon his predecessor Marc Ravalomanana in a move that could block the exiled former leader from contesting future elections.

Madagascar has been shaken by political instability since Andry Rajoelina toppled Ravalomanana in March, branding him corrupt and dictatorial. The power grab alarmed foreign investors, spooked tourists and stunted economic growth.

“It is within my powers to issue a pardon, but I haven’t thought about it much yet,” he said late on Friday in an interview with selected journalists.

A Madagascar court last month sentenced Ravalomanana in absentia to four years in jail for abuse of office in the purchase of a $60 million presidential jet.

The former president called the charges unfounded.

“While a pardon erases the sentence, it does not annul the crime. If the crime is not scrubbed out it is likely he would not be eligible to stand as a candidate,” constitutional law expert Jean Eric Rakotoarisoa told Reuters.

Distanced from a faltering peace process, Ravalomanana looks increasingly unlikely to regain the presidency as time entrenches the 35-year-old Rajoelina.

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CONGO REPUBLIC’S LEADER SET FOR RE-ELECTION

Congo Republic’s President Denis Sassou-Nguesso is all but guaranteed to be re-elected for another seven years in an election on Sunday that the opposition wants delayed but the government will push through. Although expectations are low, analysts say a peaceful poll in a nation where elections have previously led to armed conflict could encourage investors to diversify the economy in Africa’s No. 5 oil producer, which is mired by corruption allegations.

The run-up to the July 12 poll has been dominated by complaints by a plethora of opposition parties, who want the election delayed to iron out problems with the election commission, voter lists and the barring of some candidates. But their wishes appear to have been largely ignored.

“Boycott or not, the election will take place,” Sassou-Nguesso said on the campaign trail this week. “It will be held peacefully. We will not move on that.” A coalition called the Congolese Front for Opposition Parties (FPCO), a loose grouping of some 18 political parties, has called on Congolese residents to start a campaign of disobedience to block the holding of the election.

However, the protests, meant to include the mass banging of cooking pans in the capital, Brazzaville, have largely flopped. Calls from leading opposition candidate Mathias Dzon for a new election commission have also fallen of deaf ears.

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U.N CHIEF ACCUSES SOMALI REBELS OF WAR CRIME

The United Nations human rights chief said on Friday that Islamist insurgents in Somalia had executed civilians and set off bombs in residential areas, violations which she said may amount to war crimes. Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited credible reports that rebels had also set up tribunals which have handed down death sentences by stoning and decapitation and also ordered amputations.

Civilians, especially women and children, are bearing the brunt of the latest violence in the lawless Horn of Africa country, she said, as government troops try to drive insurgents out of their bases in the capital Mogadishu. “Witnesses have told U.N. investigators that the so-called al Shabaab groups fighting to topple the transitional government have carried out extrajudicial executions, planted mines, bombs and other explosive devices in civilian areas and used civilians as human shields,” Pillay said in a statement.

“Fighters from both sides are reported to have used torture and fired mortars indiscriminately into areas populated or frequented by civilians,” she said. “Some of these acts might amount to war crimes”. Al Qaeda-linked fighters in al Shabaab control much of southern and central Somalia and all but a few blocks of the capital. Neighbouring countries and western governments fear if the Somali government is overthrown, the country will become a safe haven for al Qaeda training camps and militants will destabilise the region.

Pillay, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor, said rights activists, aid workers, journalists and the displaced are especially vulnerable. Six journalists have been killed in Mogadishu this year, including four apparently assassinated, she said. There was also increasing evidence that “various forces” in Somalia are recruiting child soldiers, a serious violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, she said.

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LIBERIAN TRUTH COMMISSION RECIEVES DEATH THREAT

Members of Liberia’s truth commission have received phone death threats since recommending President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf be barred from office. The BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh says some of them have gone into hiding and turned off their mobile telephones.

In a report, the commission recommended a 30-year ban for senior politicians for their role in the civil war. “Thanks for your report; but death awaits you,” a text to commission chairman Jerome Verdier said. “Your report has damaged our future,” it continued.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up by President Johnson-Sirleaf after she was sworn into office in 2006. She has admitted that she had backed former warlord Charles Taylor’s rebellion 20 years ago, but a government spokesman said she would not resign.

“She is not going to resign. The president and the rest of us are reading the report. What I can tell you, is that President Sirleaf has tried to reconcile the country for the last two years,” Laurence Bropleh told the AFP news agency.

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RHINO HUNTING TO REACH 15 YEAR HIGH

Rhino poaching around the world is set to reach a 15-year high, conservation groups have warned. They say demand for the threatened animals’ horns is being driven by the traditional medicine trade in Asia. The groups estimated that the number of rhinos being killed in southern Africa had risen four-fold in recent years. The findings were presented at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Geneva.

“Rhinos are in a desperate situation,” said Heather Sohl, species policy officer for conservation group WWF. “This is the worst rhino poaching we have seen in many years and it is critical for governments to stand up and take action.” The briefing, prepared by WWF, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Traffic, highlighted some of the threats facing the animals. “Illegal rhino horn trade to destinations in Asia is driving the killing, with growing evidence of Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai nationals in the illegal procurement and transport of rhino horn out of Africa,” it observed.

The document also said that rhino poaching was a problem in Asia itself, with evidence of about 10 of the animals being killed in India and a further seven being slaughtered in Nepal since January. Conservationists fear that recent successes in stablising rhino populations over the past decade are being undone by the upsurge in poaching. “Increasingly daring attempts by poachers and thieves to obtain the horn is proving to be too much for rhinos and some populations are seriously declining,” warned Steven Broad, executive director of Traffic.

Under Cites, almost all rhino species fall within “Appendix I”, which means that any international commercial trade in any rhino parts is outlawed. The conservation groups said it was vital for the international community to get an “accurate and up-to-date picture on the status, conservation and trade in African and Asian rhinos”.Dr Jane Smart, director of the IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group, added: “IUCN and its African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups are working hard to gather data and information on rhinos so that Cites parties can make informed decisions and ensure that rhinos are still here for generations to come.”

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AFRICAN AMERICANS USE DNA TO TRACE AFRICAN ORIGIN

To get a sense of the pain many black Americans feel about their broken connection to Africa, just listen to the cries of joy when the divide was bridged by blacks who used DNA to trace their roots to a specific country: “My life has been turned upside down,” said Veronica Henry of Las Vegas, who quit her corporate job in information technology and set up website www.myafricandiaspora.com after she learned in 2007 that her mother’s lineage came from the Mende people of Sierra Leone.

Stephanie Smith of Randallstown, Maryland, after tracing her roots back to Sierra Leone: “I finally feel some of the separation between myself as an African American and other Africans beginning to fall away.” Others said they were almost physically sick with anticipation as they opened the envelope containing their DNA test results that could reveal their ancestry. Since DNA mapping made it possible to trace ancestry, tens of thousands of people around the world have taken tests. But the process is of particular interest to black Americans because it offers to reverse the terrible forced separation from their home.

To many Africans, Barack Obama’s trip to Ghana starting Friday will represent a homecoming for the first African American president and he will be welcomed as a son of the world’s poorest continent who has attained global power.

Obama’s heritage includes Kenya and his father came to the United States as a foreign student, but the trip will also generate interest in the success of other blacks in retracing their roots.

One effect of the slave trade that flourished between the 1600s and the 1900s transporting around 10 million Africans to the Western hemisphere, including 4 million to the land that became the United States, was that black Americans almost never knew which part of Africa they came from.

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GHANA GIVING AFRICA A NEW FACE: BONO

When Barack Obama arrives in Ghana on Friday for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president, it will be the new face of America meeting “the new face of Africa,” says Irish rocker and anti-poverty activist Bono. In a New York Times column on Friday hours before Obama arrives in Ghana, Bono wrote that if America’s first black president were making a sentimental journey to Africa, “he’d have gone to Kenya,” the birthplace of his father.

“He’s made a different choice, and he’s been quite straight about the reason,” Bono added. “Despite Kenya’s unspeakable beauty and its recent victories against the anopheles mosquito, the country’s still-stinging corruption and political unrest confirm too many of the headlines we in the West read about Africa. “Ghana confounds them,” wrote Bono, the U2 frontman who has long campaigned against poverty and AIDS in Africa.

“Quietly, modestly — but also heroically — Ghana’s going about the business of rebranding a continent. New face of America, meet the new face of Africa.” Bono said the West African nation was a well-governed state where power changed hands peacefully after the last election and which was also weathering the global economic storm.

“No one’s leaked me a copy of the president’s speech in Ghana, but it’s pretty clear he’s going to focus not on the problems that afflict the continent but on the opportunities of an Africa on the rise,” wrote Bono. “If that’s what he does, the biggest cheers will come from members of the growing African middle class, who are fed up with being patronized and hearing the song of their majestic continent in a minor key.”

Bono noted that he himself had often talked of the crises and tragedies besetting Africa, “but as the example of Ghana makes clear, that’s only one chord.

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AFRICAN LEADERS ASK G8 TO FULFIL PROMISES

Africa took centre stage at the Group of Eight summit on Friday, with wealthy nations eager to reassure critics they will honour past aid pledges and approve a new $15 billion agriculture programme. After two days of talks focused on the economic crisis, trade and global warming, the final day of the G8 gathering in Italy will concentrate on the problems facing the world’s poorest nations.

Development of Africa has become an important item on G8 agendas following promises by world leaders at Gleneagles in 2005 to increase annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, half of which was meant to go to African countries. However, aid organisations say some capitals have gone back on their word, especially this year’s G8 host Italy, and African heads of state said they would voice their concerns.

“The key message for us is to ask the G8 to live up to their commitments,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Reuters this week before flying to Italy for the half-day meeting. The l’Aquila summit has produced chequered results, making only limited progress in crucial climate talks following the refusal by major developing nations to sign up to the goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“There is a bit of frustration because one would like to convince everyone about everything and obtain all the results straight way, but things are progressing,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters late on Thursday.

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