47-year-old Illinois senator Barack Obama seems certain to become the first ever African-American US president. Many Americans are hoping he will be able to successfully steer the US out of the aftermath of the wars and the current economic crisis. As a world full of challenges await his emergence onto a global stage.

Obama was born on August 14, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Kenyan father and a white mother from the state of Kansas, in the US heartland.