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First Lady Melania Trump heads to Africa during his first major international solo trip, with the goal of placing children's well-being at the center of a five-day tour of four countries that will take him to every corner of this vast and poor continent. .
Leaving on Monday, she opens her first visit to Africa Tuesday in Ghana, in the west, then in Malawi, in the south, in Kenya, in the east and in Egypt, in the north-east.
Her first extended tour on the world stage outside the shadow of President Donald Trump could still be complicated by her husband, who spoke of the continent in rude and even vulgar terms.
This leaves the first lady with some fence repair tasks.
"She has a lot of work to do during this trip and it's a bit unfair because it's not the first lady's trip," said Judd Devermont, director of the Africa Program. Center for Strategic and International Studies. The first ladies generally practice a gentler form of diplomacy, showing interest in schools, hospitals and arts programs in the host country and avoiding more difficult problems.
Joshua Meservey, Senior African Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, highlighted the President's "positive engagement" with some African heads of state, including Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who met with Trump at the White House. at the end of the month of August. . Trump also met last week in New York with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Meservey also noted that the United States is investing heavily in public health and development initiatives in Malawi, one of the world's least developed countries.
"I think relations between the United States and Africa are much more important than the president says, and has been for decades and decades," he said. "Frankly, I suspect that the vast majority of average Africans have heard of none of these crises – it is an elite concern."
"Africans are, as a rule, very kind hosts" who "will roll out the red carpet and do their best to be hospitable," Meservey said.
A few days before the first lady boarded a US government plane for the transatlantic flight, Trump told the United Nations that he and his wife "love Africa".
Ms. Trump's five days on the continent will include a series of visits to hospitals, schools and shelters, while she focuses on the well-being of children.
Child welfare is a priority issue for Trump, the mother of a 12-year-old son. She is focusing on the issue in the United States through an initiative that she launched this year and called "Be Best". This week 's trip will mark her first long period of promoting the program and her overseas goals, on the sidelines of an event she organized during a stopover in London with the president in July.
Former model born in Slovenia and now naturalized American, Ms. Trump, 48, has traveled extensively with the president, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, Brussels, France, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Kingdom. She was in Finland for the president's July summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but did not go to Singapore for Trump's June meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
His only other international adventure was brief: a day trip to Toronto in September 2017 to join Prince Harry of Britain at a military athletic competition.
Often considered a reluctant first lady – due to her son's schooling in New York – nearly six months after taking over her son in New York, Trump did not move to the White House. She was put away for several weeks after a kidney surgery in May.
The immediate predecessors, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, have all made several trips abroad without their wives during the two terms of their administration. This kind of trip is now expected of the first ladies and such an excursion was considered a further step in Mrs. Trump's evolution in one of the most scrutinized roles in the world.
The former first ladies, Clinton, Bush and Obama, have also made several solo trips to Africa.
"The first lady, when she goes to a foreign country, can carry the flag and she could do a lot to arouse good feelings in the United States and I hope she can do it," said Myra Gutin . Rider University in New Jersey, said Ms. Trump.
President Trump raised anger against Africa earlier this year, after his personal complaint about the continent's "mainland countries" was leaked to reporters.
He subsequently offered partial denial in public, but defended himself in private, the Associated Press reported in January. He also did not deny the comment when he was questioned about this at the reception of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari at the White House in April.
The president also worried South Africa when he recently said on Twitter that the country was grabbing farms and that many farmers were being murdered. He pushed "send" on the tweet after watching a Fox News article on land issues in South Africa. While farmer killings have been going on for more than 20 years and are widely considered to be part of South Africa's high crime rate, experts say white farmers have not been targeted. There are also no signs of widespread killings, they said.
