As President Obama embarks on his much anticipated trip to Africa this weekend, U2 frontman and social activist writes an op-ed column in this weekend’s NYtimes highlighting the significance of the President’s visit to Ghana.
But as the example of Ghana makes clear, that’s only one chord. Amid poverty and disease are opportunities for investment and growth — investment and growth that won’t eliminate overnight the need for assistance, much as we and Africans yearn for it to end, but that in time can build roads, schools and power grids and propel commerce to the point where aid is replaced by trade pacts, business deals and home-grown income.
President Obama can hasten that day. He knows change won’t come easily. Corruption stalks Africa’s reformers. “If you fight corruption, it fights you back,” a former Nigerian anti-corruption official has said.
<div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/opinion/10bono.html?_r=4&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all">nytimes.com</a></div>