“I believe that when people see opportunity, when they have a sense of control of their own destiny, then they’re less vulnerable to the propaganda and twisted ideologies that have been attracting young people”, he told the BBC. These priorities are Kenyan and African, and have nothing to do with Obama.
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“There’s huge, runaway expectations in Kenya about this trip, and huge excitement”, said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and global Studies. It has commercial relationships with major U.S. companies including General Electric and Boeing. His father’s gravesite received a makeover in anticipation of a presidential visit, which won’t come.
He’s traveled here three times before, but never as president.
“President Barack Obama is not just heading to his father’s homeland, but to a hotbed of terror”, the news network said, before speaking to a security analyst who predicted that a terrorism attack was likely “given that the country is a soft target”. They can and do speak for themselves, loudly and unflinchingly, including in televised debates with Kenya’s most notorious homophobes.
But a trip as president has been put on hold for reasons foreign and domestic. On the other was Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president and a Kikuyu.
Kenyatta won the election and the charges against him were dropped in December.
But the circus atmosphere surrounding the Obama visit, complete with proposed “naked marches” to protest Obama’s support for equal rights, should not be taken as an indication that there will be a long-term uptake in anti-LGBTI policy in Kenya. “Unless there is an emergency, I have no plans for leaving my place”.
Asked about Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto, a critic of gay rights in the U.S., Obama said: “Yeah, well, I disagree with him on that, don’t I?”
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the US President wouldn’t hesitate to raise human rights concerns during the trip.
Obama launched the My Brother’s Keeper initiative to aid young men and boys of color, and he recently announced the effort would continue after he leaves office.
On the very first day the team arrived in Kenya, Danzico says it headed into Kibera, one of Kenya’s largest and poorest slums. The President’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama was born in Kendu Bay, western Kenya, in 1895.
Beyond impatience that Obama hasn’t visited, there’s been frustration that despite his ties, Obama has not made the continent a priority.
A Somali intelligence official told The Associated Press that the use of surveillance drones has increased in the past two weeks. When Obama traveled to Senegal in 2013, he advocated for universal rights for LGBT folks to the dismay of his host.
Excitement built before President Obama’s arrival Friday in the country of his father’s birth for a two-nation African tour. The legislation allows sub-Saharan African countries sell a number of their products, including textiles, in U.S. markets duty-free.
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Ethiopia’s authoritarian government has drawn global rebuke because of its human rights record.
