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A Kenyan woman touches a painting depicting a dove between US President Barack Obama and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in Nairobi. Photo: AFP

Barack Obama to discuss personal connection as well as fight against terrorism on Kenya visit

US President returns to birthplace of his father, where he will discuss his personal connection as well as the fight against Islamist terrorism

Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama will land in Kenya on Friday with a mission to strengthen US security and economic ties, but his personal connection to his father’s birthplace will dominate a trip that Kenyans view as a native son returning home.

Kenya is a critical Western ally in the battle against the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab, which massacred 148 people in April at a Kenyan university near the Somali border. Obama is likely to focus talks in Nairobi on security cooperation.

He will also spend private time with family members but will not travel to the village that is most closely associated with the family name, White House officials said.

“Just as anybody is curious about their heritage, visiting Kenya provides him an opportunity to make that personal connection,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior aide and family friend of Obama, said in an interview.

In 2006, then U.S. Senator Barack Obama meets with his step-grandmother Sarah Obama at his father's house in Kogelo, western Kenya. Photo: AP

Obama, who made a trip to Kenya while serving as a US senator in 2006, has voiced some disappointment that he will have less freedom to see the country during this trip but said he was looking forward to it nonetheless.

“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 generally,” he said.

In Nairobi he will preside over the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the 1998 US embassy bombing, and dine with President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity largely prevented Obama from going earlier in his presidency. The charges were dropped in March.

US officials have not given details of what new security cooperation could be discussed, but Kenyatta has said the fight against terrorism would be “central to discussions”.

Critics of Obama have compared his record in Africa unfavorably to that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) programme has made him a hero on the continent. Obama’s advisers point to his own initiatives on electricity, agriculture and trade as solidifying his legacy.

He is the first sitting US president to go to Kenya or Ethiopia, his second stop on the two-country tour.

In Nairobi Obama will give a speech to the Kenyan people, which is likely to highlight his personal connection to the country. In Addis Ababa he will meet with regional leaders to discuss the crisis in South Sudan and speak to the African Union, the first US president to do so.

Rights activists have raised concerns about Obama’s trip to both Kenya and Ethiopia because of alleged human rights violations.

“Both countries face real security threats but we are concerned by the way in which each government has responded, often with abusive security measures and increased efforts to stifle civil society and independent media,” several rights’ groups said in a letter to Obama.

The president’s father, Barack Obama Sr. Photo: AP<br />

Five detained Ethiopian journalists were released earlier this month. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Obama would not hesitate to raise human rights concerns during the trip and that the White House wanted to see lasting change, not simply a gesture tied to Obama’s trip.

Obama has chided African countries over their policies on gay rights, which Kenyatta has dismissed as a “non-issue” that was not on the agenda for the US leader’s visit. 

Presidential tours are always expensive, but especially so when the country being visited is, like Kenya, the scene of regular terrorist attacks.

 US and Kenyan officials are fixated on making sure al-Qaeda’s Somali-led affiliate, al-Shabab, cannot violently disrupt the US presidential visit this week.

 “The American president is a high value target so an attack, or even an attempt, would raise the profile of al-Shabab,” warned Richard Tutah, a Nairobi-based security and terrorism expert.

 Mitigating that is an overwhelming security presence in the capital.

“The level of security is suffocating,” said Abdullahi Halakhe, a regional security analyst.

Security forces on high alert 

 The closely held details of the security arrangements for Barack Obama’s three-day visit are a source of endless fascination and speculation in the Kenyan media.

“US President Obama’s Security Gadgets Arrive,” read the headline in The Star, a tabloid with a talent for Kenyan security scoops.

 “A US military cargo plane... will ferry in a whole range of secure advanced communications equipment, some of it to be used by President Obama himself when he lands,” the paper said.

 Hundreds of American security personnel have arrived in Kenya in recent weeks.

Kenyan media reports that three hotels – the Sankara, Villa Rosa Kempinski and Intercontinental – have been scouted by the Secret Service.

This week the distinctive Osprey tilt-rotor aircrafts, usually stationed at the US military base in Djibouti, flew over Nairobi alongside a White Hawk chopper with presidential insignia, causing much excitement on social media.

 Kenya is also playing its part. Nairobi’s police commander Benson Kibue said on Wednesday that 10,000 police officers – roughly one quarter of the entire national force – would be deployed to the capital.

 Kibue also said that a series of main roads would be closed today and tomorrow, in a move that will paralyse the traffic-clogged city.

 The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority announced that national airspace will be closed for 50 minutes on arrival and 40 minutes on departure, unwittingly publicising the exact dates and timings of Obama’s travel.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

 

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