AS top United States government officials plan President Barack Obama's next visit to Africa in 2011, Nigeria may be penciled down as one of his destination points if the April general elections in Nigeria meet international standard of a free and fair elections.
 BusinessWorld findings in Washington D.C show that although a definite itinerary of the President's proposed second visit to Africa is yet to be worked out, but there are strong indications that “stops will reflect positive democratic models.”
U.S. national security adviser, Ben Rhodes was quoted as saying that “no decision has been made on which countries Obama will visit, but that stops will definitely reflect positive democratic models.
It would be recalled that The U.S President in his first official visit to the African continent was attracted to Ghana, a West Africa country mainly due to its widely acknowledged free and fair elections, where an incumbent lost to the current President Atta Mills.
With at least   least thirty elections are taking place on the African continent this year, BusinessWorld gathers that it gives U.S government officials an ample opportunity to know where to focus on depending on the outcome of the elections.
The administration is said to be monitoring the more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
"The U.S. is watching and we're weighing in," Rhodes said.
John Campbell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, said the different elections give the Obama administration the opportunity to establish clear policies.
The administration "should be less willing to cut slack when those elections are less than free, fair and credible," Campbell said.
Of all the elections on the continent in 2011, not many generates such a high interest as that of Nigeria in particular and to a lesser extent that of Zimbabwe.
Investigations show that the elections in Nigeria is of great interest to all and sundry because its outcome indicates the direction the country is headed in the comity of respected and viable nations.
This is more so since the country is still suffering the fate of a very badly managed general elections in 2007 that brought late President Umaru Yaradau' to power.
  There is the general recognition that past elections, except that of 1993, have been woeful and did not represent the wishes of the Nigerian people. 
For Zimbabwe, the insistence of President Robert Mugabe to again stand for reelections after decades in power and growing call for him to step aside makes the forth coming elections in Zimbabwe very interesting to observers.
This is largely because Zimbabwe faces renewed political and economic turmoil as President Robert Mugabe is pushing for reelection in polls next year and has threatened to kick out Western firms. The veteran leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was over the weekend endorsed by his Zimbabwe's African National Union-Patriotic Front ( ZANU-PF) party to contest a likely fierce election battle against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Mugabe who at 86 is Africa's oldest leader, and could stay in power until well into his nineties if he wins another presidential term, is expected to face MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the current prime minister and his long-time foe, in a presidential vote, after he said an almost two-year power-sharing arrangement between their parties would end in February. Only last week, it was reported that President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.