President Barack Obama made his historic visit to Africa. Born of a Kenyan economist father, Obama went not to his ancestral lands but to Ghana, Africa’s newest oil state.

Oil was discovered in Ghana only in 2007. A wide swath of the Atlantic‘s western shores, the area stretching from Morocco to Angola, is fast becoming Africa’s 'oil gulf'. Oil-producing countries in Africa, including those in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, now provide 24 per cent of US oil imports. Africa has outstripped the Middle East as an oil supplier to America. Increasingly, Africa’s oil is being produced offshore.

Off Ghana’s deep Atlantic shores, the Texas-based Kosmos Energy already controls the 'Jubilee Fields', one of the largest oil finds in West Africa in the past decade which is predicted to hold 1.2 billion barrels of oil. In May 2009 Kosmos began to draw bids for shares of its stake in the oil-rich fields. Global energy players including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, the China National Offshore Oil Company and British Petroleum (BP) – all with a focused eye on Africa and a bloodied record on the continent – are beginning to circle like vultures. After all, the deadline for Kosmos Energy bids has been set for 17 July, a week after Obama’s visit to Ghana.

With heightened interest in Africa’s oil, the US has moved to strengthen its military (and naval) presence in Africa’s 'oil gulf'. In October 2008, the US African Command (AFRICOM) was officially established. Transplanting a framework from the Middle East, US military assets would be aimed at securing Africa’s oil and seeking so-called 'terrorists'. The US AFRICOM is claimed to 'help Africans help themselves'. The command lists humanitarian missions like dental clinics and the building of schools and wells, but what is more opaque is the intention to train and arm proxy military forces that can secure and sustain an ever-present fix for the United States’ addiction to fossil fuels.

Ghanaian human rights and social justice activists have expressed concerns that President Obama’s high profile visit may simply be a fig leaf for covert plans to further the US's military expansion into Africa and to move AFRICOM from its current site in Stuttgart to an African base.

Ghanaians and other Africans are clamouring for a new direction for the US's Africa policy based on mutual interests and respect.

Can the Obama administration curb the thrust towards a militarised foreign policy by reversing the advance of AFRICOM and US military expansion in Africa?

More importantly, can the Obama administration transfer its rhetorical commitment to a green economy into concrete policies that end our addiction to oil?

The long-term impact of Obama’s trip to Ghana may well be viewed through the lens of these critical questions.

* Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
* This article was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.