VIEW FROM ABROAD/AllAfrica - What Obama Still Owes Africa (a Visit to Nigeria for One Thing)

Johnnie Carson
After seven years in office, President Barack Obama has already engaged more broadly on Africa than any previous American president, but with one year remaining in the White House, there are still a few things he should do before he leaves, writes Johnnie Carson, the United States’ top policy-maker on Africa in the first Obama administration.
President Obama has significantly elevated and transformed America’s engagement with Africa, traveling widely across the continent, championing the renewal of several old programs and launching a series of highly focused new initiatives that could help speed-up Africa’s economic development.
He has been particularly active in promoting economic and development issues.
He fought successfully for the renewal and extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), America’s most important trade legislation with Africa; he hosted the first U.S.-Africa Leadership Summit, attended by 37 heads of state; and he has established several important new economic programs, including “Power Africa” – to expand significantly electrical access across the continent; “Feed the Future” – to increase household food production and to generate a green revolution throughout Africa, and “Trade Africa” – to expand substantially trade between Africa and the United States.
Recognizing the growing role of the continent’s next generation of young leaders, President Obama established YALI – the Young African Leaders Initiative, a program that will bring 500 young African entrepreneurs, professionals and community organizers to the U.S. each year for the next several years for five weeks of leadership, organization and management training.
But what next?
Despite his rather impressive list of accomplishments, here are ten things the president should do before he leaves office in January 2017:
Visit Nigeria: President Obama has traveled to Africa five times during his presidency – but he has not visited Nigeria, the continent’s economic, political, communications and petroleum giant, and its most important state. It is the continent’s largest economy – almost twice the size of South Africa’s and a third larger than that of Egypt.
It is also the continent’s most populous state, with 180 million people, its largest Muslim country, and its largest democracy.
The president has visited every major country on the continent except Nigeria, and it would be a mistake for him to leave the White House without a stop in Lagos or Abuja.
Leadership.