President Obama Delivers Tough Love, Pledges Partnership in Ghana

The president seemed to be overcome with emotion as his made these remarks, pausing to collect his composure.

President Barack Obama, left, meets with Ghana President John Atta Mills at the presidential palace...

President Barack Obama, left, meets with Ghana President John Atta Mills at the presidential palace in Accra, Ghana, Saturday, July 11, 2009. In his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, President Barack Obama was seeking to lift up the continent of his ancestors while keeping its emotions in check.

(Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo)
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"It reminds us that as bad as history can be, it's also possible to overcome," he said.

The first family participated in the unveiling of a plaque now hanging outside the male slave dungeons that reads: "This plaque was unveiled by President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama of the United States of America on the occasion of their visit to the Cape Coast Castle on the 11th day of July 2009."

Revisiting Roots of Colonialism in Africa

Acknowledging "the tragic past that has sometimes haunted this part of the world," President Barack Obama told Africans that they needed to move beyond historical grievances about colonialism and exploitation by the West to move the continent into the 21st century.

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"It is easy to point fingers and to pin the blame" for disease and conflict in Africa on others, the president told Ghanaian leaders at the Accra International Conference Center. "Yes, a colonial map that made little sense bred conflict, and the West has often approached Africa as a patron, rather than a partner. But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants."

The president made sure that his message of tough love was accompanied by an assertion of his credentials as a direct descendant of Africans.

"I have the blood of Africa within me, and my family's own story encompasses both the tragedies and triumphs of the larger African story," he said, detailing how his paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyongo Obama, a cook for the British in Kenya, was called "boy" for much of his life and was imprisoned briefly.

The president's father, Barack Obama Sr., illustrated a different lesson -- the promise and failure of Africa's renaissance in the 1950s and '60s. The former goat herder "came of age at an extraordinary moment of promise for Africa," and he traveled to the United States for an education.

But "tribalism and patronage" in Kenya "for a long stretch derailed his career," the president said. "And we know that this kind of corruption is a daily fact of life for far too many."

While Kenya had a "per capita economy larger than South Korea's when I was born," Obama added, that has changed for the worse.