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| President Barack Obama |
President Barack Obama of the United States yesterday flew from Kenya to Ethiopia, the first US president to visit the country. He will also become the first US leader to address the 54-member African Union (AU) Monday.
However, during his trip to Kenya, Obama had differed strongly with President Uhuru Kenyatta on gay rights, with the U. S. president urging Kenya to embrace diversity, a clear reference to gay rights.
AU Commission chief, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, described the trip to Ethiopia as a “historic visit” that would “broaden and deepen the relationship between the AU and the US.”
Obama will also become the first US president to address the African Union at its gleaming Chinese-built headquarters, with remarks that may touch on Africa’s democracy deficit.
He will also hold talks with regional leaders on the civil war in South Sudan.
US President, who arrived in Ethiopia yesterday, on a two-day stay, is the first American leader to visit Africa’s second most populous nation.
Air Force One was said to have touched down at Addis Ababa’s international airport after a short flight north from the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
The president was greeted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn before the 25-car convoy left for the US embassy.
The visit will include talks with the Ethiopian government, a key strategic ally but criticised for its record on democracy and human rights.
On Saturday, Obama praised Africa’s economic and business potential in a speech at a business summit.
He also visited a memorial for those killed in the 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya.
After holding bilateral talks, President Obama and President Uhuru Kenyatta said they were “united against terrorism.”
But they differed sharply in their positions on gay rights. While President Obama spoke strongly against discrimination, President Kenyatta said Kenya did not share the same values.
Obama urged Kenya to “embrace diversity,” a clear reference to gay rights.
However, US President praised Kenya’s economic and political advances, but also warned of challenges ahead.
He said his father’s homeland had “come so far in just my lifetime.”
But he also said corruption, terrorism and tribal or ethnic division were threats to its future.
“Kenya is at a crossroads, a moment filled with peril but enormous promise,” he said.
Young Kenyans nowadays did not have to serve a colonial master or leave the country – like his grandfather and father had had to, Obama said.
“Because of Kenya’s progress, because of your potential, you can build your future right here, right now,” he said to applause from a huge audience at a sports stadium in the capital, Nairobi.
But he warned that despite the country’s political stability, tribal and ethnic divisions could be stirred up.
“A politics that’s based on only tribe and ethnicity is doomed to tear a country apart. It is a failure – a failure of imagination,” he said.
However, he praised the country for emerging from the ethnic violence that erupted after the disputed 2007 election.
President Obama also warned that the “cancer” of corruption was costing the country 250,000 jobs.
And he condemned the repression of women – including female genital mutilation and forced marriage, which he said did not belong in the 21st Century – adding that the best use of development aid was to spend it on girls’ education.
Security has been tight for Obama’s two-day visit to Kenya.
The trip, which began on Friday, is his first visit as president to the land where his father was born.