By their own admission US envoys to Africa tend to spend the majority of their time fighting fires – preoccupied with troubled corners of the continent at the expense of furthering commercial ties in its brighter spots.
So the focus on trade and investment that President Barack Obama plans to bring will be welcome both for the countries he is visiting this week – Senegal in the west, South Africa and Tanzania in the east – and for US companies waking up to African economic potential.
Mr Obama’s first term was something of a damp squib for Africans. Across the continent there were murmurs of disappointment at the perceived lack of a coherent US response to changing times: to the fast-growing markets, aspirational populations and more assertive governments.