Hailed by many as ‘the prodigal son’, Obama, who is officially the first ever African American president, is expected by many to be the man who will change the face of the African continent, and looking at his foreign policy it is easy to see why people believe this: According to www.barackobama.com the new president has already ‘fought to focus America’s attention on the challenges facing Africa’, which includes stopping the genocide in Darfur, promoting stability in the Congo, mobilizing international pressure for a just government in Zimbabwe, demanding honesty on HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, fighting corruption in Kenya and developing a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.

In the future Obama has pledged to double the U.S.’s annual investment in foreign aid to $50 billion and will add a further $50 billion to the global fight against HIV/AIDS by 2013. Furthermore Obama and Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president, are planning to launch something called the Global Energy and Environment Initiative ‘to ensure that African countries have access to low carbon energy technology and can profitably participate in the new global carbon market’.

feel skin colour is mentioned. Does it then follow that many people in Africa, particularly in countries like Namibia and South Africa that have no concrete links with the new president, are only pro-Obama because he is a black man? You cannot help but wonder if support for the US president would be quite so strong if he was a white Kenyan not a black Kenyan.

In order to further explore this The Buchter News did a public survey asking the people of Lüderitz to answer several questions about the American Elections. Whilst the vast majority of you were very interested in the American elections and a huge 72% were overjoyed with Obama’s victory, the largest percentage of Buchters interviewed (35%) were unsure of how much impact the new U.S. president will have on Namibia suggesting that the support for him here is not founded in hopes that he will change the face of this country.

As to the issue of his skin? Although 45% of Buchters agreed that the fact that Barack Obama is black was not a significant factor in his presidency, 41% decided that it was important, adding to the theory that the 2008 elections were just as much about race than about politics. Over half of you then went on to say that, whilst Obama’s race may have had some influence over the outcome of the elections, his skin colour wasn’t important to you as an individual. However 23% of you feel that Obama’s Kenyan heritage is very important to you, the obvious divide in opinion perhaps indicating the level of diversity amongst the Lüderitz community.