Presidents Obama and John Atta-Mills of Ghana were cast as superheroes in the preparations for Mr.Obama’s recent visit.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN


When President Obama delivered his Inaugural Address, there was a line in it that many Africans felt was written specifically for them - a kind of shout out across the Atlantic that the new, young president had not forgotten the fatherland.

“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” the new president said, “know that you are on the wrong side of history.”

This, of course, could apply to a large chunk of the world. But in Africa, where Big Men still rule for decades, and corruption leaves the children sick and the schools bare, and government soldiers rape and kill with impunity, those words seemed to have extra resonance. Olara A.Otunnu, a former Ugandan foreign minister, remembered how that single line from the inaugural speech was “cheered throughout Africa and people were texting it to each other over their phones.’’

“People were saying, ‘Our son is there, in the White House, God bless us.’”

On July 11, when President Obama stepped off Air Force One in Ghana for his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa, it was clear he was stepping onto a continent of stratospheric expectations. He was mobbed at the airport by drummers and dancers and seemingly the entire Ghanaian government, as if his arrival were a long-awaited homecoming.

There is no denying that Mr.Obama, by the sheer dint of his Kenyan heritage, coupled with his progressive politics, his youth and his seemingly intuitive grasp of how people across the world interconnect, has an unprecedented opportunity to rewrite the America-Africa equation. Still, how to get involved? And when?

P.L.O.Lumumba, a leading anticorruption activist in Kenya, said that the masses were ready to line up behind Mr.Obama and that he should use his incredible position to pressure corrupt governments to reform themselves.

“The Obama administration should be tough as tough can be,’’ said Mr.Lumumba, who is named after one of the leading lights of Africa’s independence era, Patrice Lumumba, a Congolese hero who was assassinated in 1961 with the help of the C.I.A.

Africans have always had divergent views on America, Mr.Otunnu said. On the one hand, Africans idolized the United States as the land of opportunity and unimaginable wealth, the place they could hope one day to see with their own eyes, or better, to live in. On the other hand, the United States also evoked the dictators it had supported, and what were seen as harsh, neocolonial policies.

But with Mr.Obama in office, Mr.Otunnu said, “that changed suddenly overnight. The U.S. now has a very different meaning to Africans.”

Some of this, of course, is that Barack Obama is seen as kin. But there’s also the fact that he was an underdog in a fierce campaign and a black man elected in a white country, validation that America was indeed the land of opportunity. More than anything, his triumph served as a sharp contrast to a continent where name, class and ethnicity are still destiny, and, just in case destiny is ever interrupted, where many elections are still blatantly rigged.

“He’s not your typical Anglo-Saxon,” Mr.Lumumba said. Until this trip to Ghana, President Obama had stayed away from Africa. But Mr.Otunnu said that Africa can wait. It’s how the traditional African chief works.

“He meets, he consults and then he decides,” Mr.Otunnu said. “The chief doesn’t rush.”