Washington/Nairobi : Barack Obama will make a first presidential pilgrimage to his father’s homeland of Kenya this week, the capstone of a weeklong overture to Africa taking in three key nations.
Obama will host recently elected Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy – at the White House today. On Thursday, he will jet to Nairobi, and from there trace the Great Rift Valley northward to Addis Ababa, becoming the first US president to visit Ethiopia.
The first African-American president of the United States has visited his ancestral continent four times while in office, but has not yet traveled to Kenya during his White House tenure.
A pipe-smoking economist, he walked out when Obama was just two and died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982, aged 46. Obama’s planned ‘homecoming’ was long delayed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Those charges, linked to ethnic violence, were suspended last year – in part, prosecutors say, because the Kenyan government thwarted the investigation. But the suspension has paved the way for the landmark visit and a meeting between the two men.
“It is obviously symbolically important, and my hope is that we can deliver a message that the US is a strong partner, not just for Kenya, but for sub-Saharan Africa”, Obama said ahead of the trip. Trade and security are expected to dominate political discussions. But there will also be a personal and symbolic flavour, even down to the meeting with Kenyatta.
