Ghanaian street cleaners were deployed on Friday night in torrents of rain for a last sweep of roads bedecked with hoardings celebrating Barack Obama’s first state visit to Africa. The trip began on Friday night and includes only Ghana but it will be followed by millions of Africans searching for clues to what the first black US president will bring to the continent from which his father came.

Ghanaians have been swept by a surge of national pride in recent days that their country, the first to win independence from Africa’s European colonisers, has been chosen as the venue.