Across Ghana citizens are prepping for Obama’s visit by donning shirts with images of the U.S. leader while street vendors are stocking miniature American flags.

“The fact that his father is African and he picked us makes us special,” said Adrian Landry, general manager of a beach hotel in the capital, Accra.

During his one-day visit, Obama will meet with Ghanaian president John Atta Mills, who took office in January.

The peaceful election of Mills in the nation of 23 million is a far cry from recent elections in Obama’s father’s native Kenya, where post-election chaos erupted last year.

Ghana emerged as a democracy in 1992 after a long history of military rules. The nation has maintained a clean image since then in a continent notorious for conflict.

“By traveling to Ghana, we hope to highlight the effective governance that they have in place,” Obama said in an interview with AllAfrica.com, which highlights news from the continent.

G8 addresses hunger

Meanwhile, the G-8 -- the gathering of the wealthiest nations -- agreed to invest $20 billion to fight world hunger, $5 billion more than originally planned. Obama attributes the increase to a move on his part -- citing his own family background.

"My father traveled to the United States a mere 50 years ago. And yet now I have family members who live in villages. They themselves are not going hungry, but live in villages where hunger is real. And so this is something that I understand in very personal terms," he said.

"We've got 100 million people who dropped into further dire poverty as a consequence of this recession. We estimate that 1 billion people are hungry around the globe. And so, wealthier nations have a moral obligation as well as a national security interest in providing assistance. And we've got to meet those responsibilities.”

America's first black president is seen as better placed than any other Western leader to deal directly with African rulers because he can approach them without risking accusations of neo-colonialism, condescension or racism.