US President Barack Obama in Ghana Saturday toured a major port in the great slave trade, calling it "a moving experience," on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office. His trip to the fort came as part of a visit to Ghana and after talks with President John Atta Mills and an address to lawmakers in Accra. Later at a departure ceremony before leaving the country, Obama said: "I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African-Americans, walking through those doors of no return but then walking back (through) those doors. It was a remarkable reminder that, while the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress." Thousands of people gathered on the tarmac to see off the first African American president who had declared in a speech to Parliament that "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." In his speech in Parliament, Obama said the simple truth of the time was that "the 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra as well." "Your prosperity can expand America's. Your health and security can contribute to the world's." "So I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our inter-connected world - as partners with America on behalf of the future we want for all our children," he was quoted as saying by the German News Agency "DPA".
