Obama wraps up two-day Kenya visit

This first presidential visit to his ancestral home at the fag-end of his second term is the ultimate triumph of the “politics of symbolism” that has characterised Obama’s engagement with Africa.

Obama said the U.S. government has opened two women entrepreneurship centres in Kenya and Zambia, with the third one to be opened in Mali later this year, to help step up support for women entrepreneurs. But Uhuru Kenyatta distanced himself immediately from the American leader’s comments, explaining that Kenya has too many challenges, such as education and health, to address something like LGBT rights. Under different circumstances, or delivered by someone else, the speech could have sounded like intrusive moralizing by a foreign president.

The Kenyan president publicly disagreed with Obama.

Obama praised Kenya’s considerable economic and political progress in recent decades.

People reports that this little snippet of Lipala wasn’t the only performance that evening from the US president. And he called for an end to forced marriages for girls who should be attending school and “genital mutilation”.

He also warned Kenya would “not succeed if it treats women and girls as second-class citizens”. “Every country has traditions that are unique”, he said. I believe that you have the drive and the passion to change the world.

Boniface Mwangi, a prominent Kenyan social activist who also met with Obama, agreed that it is Kenya’s leaders who most need to listen to Obama’s messages.

The trip to Nairobi was a festive homecoming of sorts for Obama. Obama’s father is buried in western Kenya.

That was one of the moments when some listeners thought Obama was speaking about a Kenya they didn’t recognize.

Rhoda Naserian, 21, a law student at the University of Nairobi, said she felt “inspired”. “I really don’t know”. Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta was not interested. “That is not the case”.

At least six children born while the President was in the country were named Barack Obama, local media reported. “That, by definition, makes it complicated”.

US President Barack Obama took to the dance floor at a State Dinner held in his honour in Nairobi.

But evidently he thought better of it. He waved and smiled at them instead and headed up the stairs of his plane to depart for the last time as president. This time, he arrived on Air Force One and traveled in the president’s armored auto nicknamed “the Beast”.