President Bush has been smothered with affection here, never more so than on Sunday, when he sat at a wooden desk under a sweltering sun with President Jakaya Kikwete by his side and signed a $698 million grant of foreign aid to Tanzania.

But while people here in the capital city of this East African nation are excited about Mr. Bush, another American politician, Senator Barrack Obama appears to enthuse the people much more.

President Bush while on a six-day, five-country tour to spotlight American efforts to fight poverty and disease in Africa had his face on billboards all over town but the name Obama is on the lips of all Tanzanians. from the lowest people in society to city merchants and to the artisans in makeshift stalls at a dusty open-air market on the outskirts of town.

Tanzania is one of the countries that benefit from Mr. Bush’s global AIDS initiative, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, called Pepfar. Mr. Bush visited an AIDS clinic to spotlight the program, which is to expire this year.

Africa is one corner of the world where, despite the war in Iraq, the image of the United States remains favorable — a point Mr. Kikwete made, ever so gingerly, to Mr. Bush.

Yet Africans, like many Americans, are already looking ahead to the next president of the United States. And, as in the United States, race and gender play a role in the debate. An unscientific sampling on Sunday turned up little mention of John Macain and his fellow Republicans; but talk of Mr. Obama and his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton was everywhere.

Outside of town, at the Mwenge Village market, old women are all seated with a newspaper in her lap, debating the Democrats who lit up at the mention of Mr. Obama’s name and put his hand to his chest.

The Obama-mania is really taking all Tanzanians like any other people in America; maybe because Obama hails from just the neighboring Kenya. Well, it’s their right to like the son of their soil, I mean the African soil.