BY News Agency
The aircraft of President Barack Obama of the United States (US) touched down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya on Friday evening.
He was recieved by President Uhuru Kenyatta on his first visit to his father’s homeland since he became the president of US in 2009.
Major streets in Nairobi have been agog ahead of the visit. Stars and stripes were flying all over the capital, giant billboards and paintings bearing his face with slogans such as “Welcome home” and last-minute beautification projects including the painting of street kerbs and planting of flowers and grass.
While in kenya, Obama will attend the sixth Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), the first such gathering to be held in sub-Saharan Africa.
He is also expected to hold key talks on the country’s security challenges.
Throughout his stay in his fatherland, Obama is not expected to leave Nairobi amid fears of terror threats and logistical challenge of visiting Kogelo, a remote terrain where his step-grandmother still lives.
Obama will leave Kenya for Ethiopia and visit the headquarters of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, capital of the country.
It has taken nine years for him to return to Kenya, where his father was raised. Obama met him only once, at the age of 10, before he died in a car crash in 1982.
He was raised by his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, and his grandparents in Hawaii. But it is the bloodline of Barack Obama Sr. that has stirred so many questions about his roots.
His advisers once feared it might keep him from being re-elected and he eventually marched into the White House briefing room on April 27, 2011, to present his long-form birth certificate to quiet the controversy stirred by Donald Trump, popular American businessman.
During his visit in 2006, he lingered in Kenya, venturing deep into Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, delivering an impromptu speech with a bullhorn as throngs of people gathered to see him.
“I love all of you, my brothers, all of you, my sisters,” he told the cheering crowd.
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