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A Senegalese Follower of American Politics
President Obama’s poll ratings may be suffering in the United States, but he remains wildly popular in Africa. The porter who showed me to my room in the Lagon 2 Hotel in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, on learning that I am American told me, “Monsieur Obama is not just the President of America, he is President of all the Africans.” At a meeting later in the week in the offices of a firm of engineering consultants, one staff member sported a baseball cap with “Barack Obama” in big letters. Taxi drivers all over town have a pine-tree-shaped stars and stripes air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. Obama is much more popular than Senegal’s octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade, who comes in for daily, and increasingly vituperative, criticism in the country’s independent press. [click to continue…]
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