According to the Reuters News Agency, Secretary of State Clinton who is currently on a six-nation tour of Africa, will arrive in Ghana on August 10, for the funeral of Ghana’s President John Atta Mills whose sudden death on July 24, was followed by a smooth transition in one of Africa’s most stable democracies.
President Sirleaf who has over the years concretized Liberia’s strong ties with the United States and Hillary Clinton in particular, has announced in Monrovia that she will be in Ghana for the funeral of her fallen sub-regional colleague whom she said she will personally miss.
And while signing the book of condolence recently at the Ghanaian Embassy in Monrovia for the fallen Ghanaian leader, President Sirleaf described the late professor as a great leader whose death was untimely, and a loss to Africa.
There is also a high probability that the political leader of Liberia’s main opposition party Mr. George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), will be among hundreds of foreign dignitaries bidding farewell to the late professor on his final journey.
Meanwhile, prior to her arrival in Ghana, Mrs. Clinton will make further stops in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa, where she will stop in former President Nelson Mandela’s home village of Qunu on Monday for a private meeting with the revered liberation leader who has quietly faded from public view in his formal retirement.
Throughout her trip, Clinton is expected to highlight U.S. programs on development, education and HIV/AIDS -- long the backbone of U.S. engagement with Africa -- as well as U.S. economic interest in a continent whose rich resources and enviable growth rates have drawn rival suitors including China and India.
