Bill Clinton: “Thank you. President and Mrs. Rawlings, honorable ministers, honorable members of the Council of State, honorable…”

“Thank you. President and Mrs. Rawlings, honorable ministers, honorable members of the Council of State, honorable Members of Parliament, honorable members of the judiciary, nananom [to the chiefs], and the people of Ghana. Mitsea mu. America fuo kyia mo [My greetings to you. Greetings from America]. Now you have shown me what akwaaba [welcome] really means. Thank you, thank you so much. I am proud to be the first American President ever to visit Ghana and to go on to Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal. It is a journey long overdue. America should have done it before, and I am proud to be on that journey. Thank you for welcoming me. I want to listen and to learn. I want to build a future partnership between our two people, and I want to introduce the people of the United States, through my trip, to the new face of Africa. From Kampala to Cape Town, from Dakar to Dar es Salaam, Africans are being stirred by new hopes for democracy and peace and prosperity. Challenges remain, but they must be to all of you a call to action, not a cause for despair. You must draw strength from the past and energy from the promise of a new future. My dream for this trip is that together we might do the things so that, 100 years from now, your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of a new African renaissance. With a new century coming into view, old patterns are fading away: The cold war is gone; colonialism is gone; apartheid is gone.…”