Tie loosened, shirt unbuttoned, jacket off, President George W. Bush swung to the beat, gyrating hips like a seasoned professional (writes Jonathan Clayton).

The appreciative audience cheered and applauded madly, even if wife Laura had initially looked on slightly aghast as the US President leapt off his seat in answer to the challenge of the swaying bottom of a Liberian woman’s dance of welcome.

No need to worry. Here in Liberia, on the final leg of a final African trip of a waning presidency, Mr Bush was among friends and, ever a seasoned politician, he knew it.

With the Liberian flag – uncannily similar to the one of his home state of Texas – fluttering nearby and almost freed of the burdens of office he threw caution to the wind to bid Africa farewell. “I feel pretty much at home here… In Liberia, you fly the lone star flag,” he conceded.

The gesture seemed destined to win him even more friends on a continent which, initially suspicious, has gradually taken him to its heart – a huge irony for a man initially lampooned for an empty passport and lack of geographical knowledge.

Whatever happens in the rest of the world, and how he must wish it could see him in the same light, Mr Bush’s legacy in Africa is secure. A man who did not know where Amsterdam was seems to have found a home on the most obscure continent of the world.

Here, President Bush is the president who visited more times than any other in living memory and handed out millions in aid packages, which even if linked to the agenda of the Christian Right, were met with grateful hands.

On a week long visit, much of it out of the limelight while the rest of world was transfixed on the battle to be his successor, Africa has shown its gratitude. He renewed promises of friendship and handed out some £500 million in aid and throughout the five-nation trip, which ended yesterday, was received with genuine warmth and appreciation.

In Benin, the government declared George W Bush day a national holiday. In Tanzania, where he handed out mosquito nets and embraced nurses, tens of thousands lined streets to wave goodbye.

In Ghana, a motorway was named after him and in Rwanda, where his democratic predecessor Bill Clinton is blamed for not intervening to stop the 1994 genocide, he was listened to sympathetically as he spoke passionately of the need to end tribal conflicts in nearby Kenya and Sudan’s Darfur region..

He reserved the best to last. When he flew into Liberia he became the first sitting president to visit a country, set up by freed American slaves in 1820, for three decades. The two countries flags are almost identical, except the Liberian one has one star to America’s 50. The most widely used currency is the dollar.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, known as “Ma” to her followers, knows only too well her election to the Presidency in 2005 of Africa’s oldest republic would not have been possible without Mr Bush’s decision to send US marines to the country two years earlier.

On this visit he gave away one million text books and desks for 10,000 school children. In return, he was granted the freedom of the capital city of Monrovia, itself named after a US President, James Monroe.

Flying home and reflecting on popularity probably unthinkable anywhere else in the world, a jubilant President Bush told accompanying reporters: “I would say this is one of the most exciting trips of my presidency. You saw the crowds, you saw the enthusiasm.”

No doubt reflecting on how different it all could have been, he then shared the comments of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. “He said, ‘I hope the next president is as good as this one.’”

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