A year after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States, significant progress and renewed promises and prospects have started to unfold for the critical development of the black continent.

Again that spectacular and emotional victory speech at Grant Park, in Chicago, that made Reverend Jesse Jackson to cry and Oprah Wilfrey speechless, made Barack Obama  to raise his hand and twice swore an oath that made him the 44th president of the United States of America and the first black African-American in the epoch of the country’s history; The president deliberately changed the cause of events for blacks in and outside the country for limitless privilege and opportunity.

According to separate opinion polls conducted last December by CNN and Pew Research Centre, the change voters anticipated and believed in spiked hope in black communities. Thirty-nine  per cent of blacks say blacks are better now than they were five years ago. That’s nearly double the 20 per cent who felt that way just two years before. And majority of about 53 per cent believed their lives will be better still in the future, while nine per cent points to it since 2007.

The election of Barrack Obama has materially changed the lives of African-Americans and has inspired a “renaissance of achievement” and hope. Taking a closer look at strength for strength standard of living, gratification with their own communities, assessment of relations  between blacks and whites-few find the number rising since Obama accepted the responsibilities the in Oval Office.

America has now moved from the time of sheer injustice, oppression and inequality when Martin Luther King (jnr) lived and died, to a brighter moment in history where the son of Kenya wields the helm of global power in the White House.

An anonymous columnist writing on this subject of renewed hope for African-Americans, affirms that, “for a people whose views have so often been dour and bleak, that is bracing news optimism is fuel for the engine, wind for the wings, the single indispensable element in getting from here to there. So, it is good to see it flowering once again in African-American communities, flowering as it has not in too many years. Good to know more of our children are coming of age in homes where they will be taught the future is theirs to mold and the only limitations are the ones they choose to accept”.

Though Obama was elected to solve the American problems of Wall Street, Iraqi and Afghan wars, global financial melt down, climate change, among  others; the Obama figure does not just represent that of a hero in a world of mysticism and      tyranny but a relief to the oppressed, succour to the shackled, a redeemer to the renege, a saviour to the sorrowful, a pound to the pennyless planted in their burden of history.

“Africans see Obama as capable of cleansing the well of memory poisoned by hundreds of years of suffering on a continental scale, which began with slavery and continues today with oppression imposed by African despots who have left young people yearning for something better with only a faded past with nothing uplifting in it for them.”

The promised milk and honey to the continent of Africa is seen by some in form of direct material benefits like the source of American dollars into the continent, increased aid and trade opportunities and prized policies to meet the pressing poverty rate. Others can be in form of far reaching and embracing commitment to advance the cause of democracy in Africa and attempts toward aiding the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for African Development (NEMD) to deal with the challenges facing the continent.

The hidden passion and desire the “forgotten continent” once had has been awaken by his victory and for the first time in a long time, optimism grows among Africans both home and abroad and we have come to understand that the inevitable change that can unlock Africa’s potential is good governance and the daily fact of life, which is corruption, must be contained.

Deinma is a student, of UNN.