海角大神

President Obama and predecessor George W. Bush haven鈥檛 exactly spent a lot of time together on American shores.

But with Mr. Bush still quite popular in Africa for his robust US aid programs, and with Tanzania going slightly crazy about the visit of an American president of African heritage, the US duo is hoping to offer up a bit of American soft power on behalf of US trade and better relations on the continent.

The 44^th聽and 43^rd聽US presidents will jointly lay a wreath in Dar es Salaam tomorrow聽in honor of those killed 15 years ago at a bombing of the American embassy, in what proved to be one of the first attacks on a US target by Osama bin Laden.

The White House described the joint wreath-laying as a coincidence, not scripted. At first, it appeared the two men would not meet despite being in the same city in the same corner of Africa.

Mr. Obama鈥檚 journey to Africa has included stopovers in Senegal and an emotional visit to South Africa, where Obama met the family of Nelson Mandela, the civil and human rights icon and former president who helped end apartheid.

The White House admits the Africa trip is an effort to improve the administration鈥檚 engagement with a continent where Chinese investment has risen from $10 billion in 2000 to some $200 billion last year, usually through state-run or state-linked companies.聽 In March, new Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania on his first overseas trip.

Yesterday Obama announced a聽surprisingly robust $7 billion initiative to help with African electrification, and tomorrow the president visits a US-designed and run power plant in Tanzania.聽

The White House is in the East African nation partly because, on a six-day Africa trip designed to promote 聽trade and democracy, Obama needed to go to East Africa but could not easily visit old ally Kenya, since both the recently elected president and vice president are under indictment by the International Criminal Court for complicity in 2007 election violence.

Bush is in Dar es Salaam for a women鈥檚 conference on health that is run out of his George W. Bush institute. Contrary to many assumptions, Bush, as well as former President Bill Clinton, is widely seen as bringing far more tangible help to Africa than Obama.

Bush鈥檚 Emergency Plan of AIDS Relief is one of his administrations signal foreign policy successes, and Obama has praised it both in Senegal and then South Africa for helping to save millions of lives. At the same time, Obama has said the old US model of handing out aid willy-nilly on the continent is now giving way to a "new model" of trade and joint US-African partnerships, as Africa's economy continues to rise.聽

In the Obama-Bush event, the White House evidently feels it makes sense to show togetherness in a place where Chinese investment and a wide network of expatriate business and trade communities from Great Britain, France, and Germany have often put American firms well in the back of the race on a continent that is starting to show dramatic signs of economic rise.

As Monitor correspondent Mike Pflanz noted in talking with Kenyan sources last week:

Mr. Pflanz also pointed out the other side of the US trade equation, noting that China in recent months:

Announcing the electricity program in Capetown yesterday, Obama stated that:聽