UPDATED WITH MORE PICTURES.

hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Family is visiting Africa- first stop, Senegal.

President Obama and Senegal President Sall shake hands after their joint news conference at Presidential Palace in Dakar

First Lady Michelle Obama hugs students at Martin Luther King middle school, an all-girls school in Dakar, Senegal, June 27

Obama to visit Senegal’s “House of Slaves”

TO CLUELESS MEDIA: PRES. OBAMA’S IN AFRICA ‘CUZ IT HAS TOP TEN FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN WORLD
by @zizii2

“THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007.”

Nothing demonstrates the vapidity of the corporate media than the rancid ignorance they display when they are gung-ho to score cheap shots at President Obama on important matters, rather than do basic research!!!

And so it is that on undertaking a long overdue working visit to three countries on the continent of Africa, the corporate media including FOXNews universe display once again the national embarrassment that they have become. But for the fact that they’d bleat about threats to their “First Amendment Rights”, I’d rather Pres Obama left them behind to indulge in muffin stories and similar shiny objects they chase best. Foreign media ALWAYS outshine ours anyway, so their absence would actually improve the media pool at these foreign pressers. And the public would be better informed for it.

So cynical journos like David Nakamura of @WAPO , and colleagues at AtlanticWire @NYT , Moonie News, @ABC, @NBC, @MSNBC, @CBS, @CNN, @FOX, @YahooNews, here are 12 FACTS to get into their heads before they utter any more inanities about the President’s trip to Africa, and carping endlessly about “costs of trip” versus sequestered White House tours. Without the 80% of Coltan produced from the Congo belt running your iPhone/iPad or other tablet LED screens, they’d be pecking away at an old typewriter (well, assuming even the steel in the machine’s housing isn’t from African iron ore).

We are talking about Africa in the 21st Century, not some Henry Stanley 19th century racist travelogue you read about “natives doing quaint tribal dances”, or as the late Literary maestro Chinua Achebe snarkily penned at the end of his seminal novel Things Fall Apart, the colonizer’s version of history in which the indigenous African only warrants a passing line about his own history. No we are talking about a forward moving continent, warts and all that brooks no nonsense from anybody, superpower or not!

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To be honest President Obama’s travel to the continent of Africa is at best being perceived as a face-saving effort, as many on the continent are not impressed with the scant attention he has paid to African countries. The most favorable observation is that at least he has left the continent alone to chart its own course without the undue meddling of Cold War America or condescending administrations that followed the collapse of the battle between superpowers.

While there is some loud grumbling about the fact that America’s obsession with the “War on Terror” and recent variations in the Maghreb (Libya, Algeria, Tunisia), Sahel (Mali) occludes every other subject during bilateral and multilateral talks

If many of you remember, President Obama promised to engage actively with the continent’s innovative thinkers during the seminal White House Townhall with Young African Leaders.

Read the rest of this informative piece at the link above.
 

President Barack Obama greets Senegalese President Macky Sall as U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Senegalese First Lady Mariame Faye Sall look on, at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal June 27