Another stellar guest post by Bob Albrecht.  Thanks Bob!

It’s Israel -- a country, not a continent -- that candidates for president have to have a proven record of caring for if they’re to win the right to call shots from the Oval Office. Before issuing an AFRCN APPRL endorsement of the Republican presidential candidates, let us look not at Israel but instead at the relationships the men and women vying to wrestle away a second term from President Obama have with Africa.

Surely none will have closer ties than Obama, who was born in Kenya (Kidding!).

Shortly after her 2008 campaign as Sen. John McCain’s veep candidate, plenty of gems about Sarah Palin emerged from officials who had been tasked with getting her up to speed on foreign policy. None were better than the admission Palin "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself." She was probably too busy keeping watch on Russia.

Mitt Romney’s policies on Africa aren’t particularly well known, which is good because he’d backtrack from them if they were. The national health care law affectionately dubbed “ObamaCare” by conservatives was modeled after a similar bill made law while Romney was the governor of Massachusetts. As he prepares to win over voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney delivered a speech in Michigan using Powerpoint to lay out a plan to repeal ObamaCare and implement in its place a bill that lets states choose their own healthcare path. The things is, Romney’s plan still looks and sounds a lot like Obama’s plan, with the only distinction being Romney insists it’s not.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Romney had investments in an oil company tied to the Sudanese government, which is accused of being partially responsible for the massacres in Darfur. Safe to say governor Romney and his great head of hair aren’t getting our support.

Which brings us to Newt Gingrich, who went on a 24-day safari in Africa. Outside a hotel in Zambia, his wife, Callista, shooed away a monkey so she could take a picture of a giraffe. So, there’s that.

Herman Cain, also known as the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza (we haven’t heard of it either), promises if he’s elected not to hire any Muslims in his administration. The guess here is that wouldn’t go over well with practitioners of Islam, which some believe to be the most practiced religion in Africa.

As for the rest of the field: Jon Huntsman has better hair even than Romney, which seems notable; Rick Santorum once lost a Pennsylvania senate seat by double digits so we didn’t bother looking up his ties to Africa; and Mitch Daniels recently admitted he’s “probably not” ready to debate Obama on foreign policy, leading to the assumption he, too, knows little.

And with that, the endorsement and a free AFRCN APPRL T-shirt goes to Gingrich, who hiked in the jungle with mountain gorillas and saw 1.2 million wildebeests on the Serengeti plains.

It’s tough to beat a safari.