Air Force One, carrying Mr Bush and his wife Laura, touched down at Benin's Cadjehoun international airport where the US leader was due to meet President Thomas Boni Yayi in a brief stopover before flying on to Tanzania. Mr Bush is also due to visit Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia during his six-day trip to Africa, his second to the continent.

Mr Bush's visit also aims to stress Washington's desire to establish a new partnership based on trade and investment and not purely on aid handouts that have dominated the West's past relationship with post-colonial Africa.

Mr Bush has announced plans to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kenya to support efforts by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan to end a post-election conflict that has killed 1,000 people. He is also expected to forcefully reiterate US backing for more international peacekeepers to deploy in war-torn Darfur to try to end the killing of civilians in the Western Sudanese region which has been called "genocide" by Washington.

Mr Bush's African tour in the final year of his presidency takes him to five countries carefully chosen in an effort to show a different face from the poverty-plagued and conflict-stricken continent normally portrayed by the world's media.

Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia are now relatively stable states whose presidents are viewed by Washington as a new generation of leaders, with democratic credentials, who can show the positive potential of Africa.