I really can do no better today than to direct you to Shashank's well thought out post in which he concludes:
After seven months, a presidential visit and now this major trip, it's still unclear what the Obama administration wants to do differently in Africa. The most important U.S. agency that works on Africa, USAID, still has no leader. Clinton's trip was full of the same hopeful but canned rhetoric about "good governance," "food security" and "helping Africans help themselves." Folks who care about Africa hardly expect the continent to be the Obama administration's No. 1 foreign policy priority. But they will be disappointed with this trip.
Not only is it disappointing, but it's actually quite laughable - and not in a joyous laughter sort of way. I really don't understand how anyone is meant to take US policy towards Africa (the presently non-existent policy, mind you) seriously when the country's own Secretary of State makes such ridiculous statements as her proposal for camcorders in the Congo, and her lending of support to Somalia's Sheik Sharif - evidently unaware of the consequences - among others. Her utterly distasteful outburst in the Congo doesn't do much to bolster her, or American, credibility either (surely there was a classier, more professional way of handling the matter, even if it upset you, Madame Secretary), and neither does her outlandish comparison of the 2000 Florida recount to Nigeria's rigged elections. I am terribly sorry to discover that she is still seemingly bitter over the matter, but drawing such faulty moral equivalences jeopardizes the advance of democracy in countries like Nigeria and others across Africa where corruption is rampant. To draw my own comparison, the ridiculousness implicit in such a statement is tantamount to that which would compare women's rights in, say, Sierra Leone - the worst place in Africa to be a woman according to the 2008 UN Human Development Report - to those in the United States. Think on that.
While Secretary Clinton may be dancing away across the continent, the U.S. missed a prime opportunity to seriously engage with African leaders on matters of trade, foreign assistance, human rights - heck, even the objectives behind AFRICOM - and other matters of actual consequence to the continent. It's little wonder that African leaders are more seriously engaging with the Chinese as regards their countries' needs and policies. I probably would, too.