US' challenges overshadow Africa

NAIROBI: Despite the joy and high expectations inspired across Africa by Barack Obama's election, issues on the world's poorest continent have hardly featured at all on the new US president's agenda in his first 100 days.

Many Africans hoped Obama's inauguration in January as Washington's first African-American leader would mark the start of a new US drive to end the poverty, disease, corruption and conflicts that plague many of their countries.

But a tidal wave of domestic priorities ranging from the worst financial crisis for decades to floods and now a public health emergency triggered by swine flu, plus a series of foreign policy challenges, have left little time for Africa.