President Obama has set the stage for more personal engagement with Africa

I'm quoted extensively in Jim Fisher-Thompson's Dec. 31 article "Observers Hail Obama’s Early Focus on Africa, Asia, Americas" for America.gov. Here are some of the quotes from the beginning of the article:

Despite the numerous foreign policy challenges he faces, President Obama “has set the stage for more personal engagement with Africa,” and that is an important policy move, says David Shinn, a U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia in the mid-1990s who now teaches political science at George Washington University. Shinn recently told America.gov, “I am impressed that Obama visited sub-Saharan Africa [Accra, Ghana] so soon in his first term, which I believe is the earliest visit to sub-Saharan Africa by a U.S. president. He was followed by Secretary of State [Hillary Rodham] Clinton, who made one of the most extensive visits ever to Africa by a U.S. secretary of state.”