President Barack Obama is wrapping up three days in Nairobi Sunday with an address to the people of Kenya.
Obama thanked Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for his hospitality during the visit and said he is proud to be the first Kenyan-American to become President of the United States.
Obama recalled his first visit to the country 30 years ago and said Kenya has made incredible progress during his lifetime.
He said the specter of terrorism has touched far too many lives in Kenya, from the bombing of the U.S. embassy to the attack on the Westgate Mall. He said Kenya is at a crossroads, a moment filled with peril but also with enormous progress.
Obama said the U.S. will stand shoulder to shoulder with Kenya in the fight against terrorism. He said extremists like al-Shabab want people to turn against each other. Obama said both Kenya and the United States have Muslim minorities who make enormous contributions to society.
He also said too often in Kenya, corruption is tolerated because that’s how things are done. Obama said it is time to change that habit.
Obama warned Kenya will not succeed if it treats women and girls as second class citizens. He said female genital mutilation and early and forced marriages have no place in the 21st century.
He was introduced by his half-sister, Auma Obama and welcomed by a cheering crowd at the Safaricom Indoor Arena.
From Nairobi, Obama flies to Addis Ababa as the first sitting U.S. president to visit Ethiopia.
Ben Rhodes, the president’s national security spokesman, said Obama will raise human rights issues in Ethiopia, just as he did in Kenya. During a press conference Saturday with his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama said he believes the state should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation.
Rhodes said the president will also convene a meeting regional leaders to focus on the deteriorating security situation in South Sudan, but he said Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is not expected to attend.
President Obama ended a busy day in Nairobi Saturday at a state dinner hosted by Kenyatta.
Obama noted that his Kenyan-born father and Kenyatta’s father knew each other
“It would have been hard for them to imagine how their sons might be sitting here today,” he said.
He also joked that “some of my critics back home are suggesting that I’m back here to look for my birth certificate,” a reference to accusations that he is not a U.S.-born citizen, which would make him constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.
Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president, Joma Kenyatta, hailed the initiative begun in the late 1950s that allowed hundreds of Kenyan college students, including Obama’s father, to study in the United States.
At a pre-dinner news conference, Obama said the U.S. and Kenya stand united against the threat of terrorism and have coordinated extensively and effectively in dealing with terrorist threats, primarily from Somali militant group al-Shabab.
He urged Kenyan officials to stop seeking bribes in order to encourage business growth.
President Kenyatta agreed that fighting terrorism is extremely important, and said his government is committed to rooting out corruption.
But Kenyatta disagreed with President Obama about gay rights, which he said is a “a non-issue” for Kenyans.
Earlier, Obama addressed the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, being held in Africa for the first time. He said entrepreneurship in Africa helps break down barriers and build bridges between cultures, providing an alternative to violence and hopelessness.
“Africa is on the move,” he said, and “Kenya is leading the way.”
In his remarks, President Kenyatta spoke of Kenya’s security struggles and its swiftly growing economy. He told his audience of entrepreneurs and investors from around the world to tell friends everywhere that “Africa is open and ready for business.”
On Friday night, the president had dinner at his hotel with his Kenyan relatives, including his step-grandmother, Mama Sarah, and his half-sister, Auma Obama. U.S. officials said security concerns ruled out a presidential trip to the west Kenyan village of Kogelo, where his father was born and is buried.
Once in Addis Ababa, Obama will be formally welcomed by the Ethiopian government on Monday. He also will meet with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, and the two government leaders will hold a joint news conference.
On Tuesday Obama is due to make the first visit by a U.S. president to the headquarters of the African Union.
Human-rights concerns loom large in the background of Obama’s travels in Africa. Before he left the United States, human-rights groups urged him to call for fundamental rights reforms in both Kenya and Ethiopia.
In a letter to Obama, a group of 14 nongovernmental organizations and individual experts said the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments “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.”
(VOA’s Gabe Joselow, Anita Powell, Arash Arabasadi and Vincent Makori contributed to this story.)
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