Obama coming to Africa - a trip alive with possibilities

The visit is one that has long been anticipated by Africans, but has it come too late to generate the kind of enormous buzz that might have happened had this trip happened several years earlier? J BROOKS SPECTOR looks at the possibilities.

While still a young man, in a true-to-life bildungsroman, Barack Obama had written a bestselling book, Dreams from My Father, that was part of his effort to achieve a personal connection with his long-absent father - and the African side of his heritage. Then, by the time he had been elected as a US senator from Illinois, Obama had authored a second book, The Audacity of Hope, in which he set out his evolving views on both foreign and domestic issues.