Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, shown here at the United Nations in 2014, is expected to discuss national security matters when he meets with U.S. President Barack Obama. Photo by Cia Pak/UN
NAIROBI, Kenya, July 20 (UPI) -- Kenya is using President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to show security threats in the country have been contained.
Obama will visit Ethiopia and Kenya July 25 and 26, as the keynote speaker of Nairobi's Global Entrepreneurial Summit, a conference organized by the United Nations. He will also meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and, it was revealed Monday, address an audience in Kasarani Stadium, a modern venue that seats 60,000 people for soccer.
It was also announced Obama would not visit Kogelo, his father's hometown. This will be Obama's fourth visit to Kenya, his first as president.
In 2013, 67 people were killed by al-Shabab gunmen in a shopping mall in Nairobi. The Westgate Mall reopened Saturday after extensive renovation, with a noticeably larger security presence. Officials called the reopening, and evidence of crowds, as signs the city had rebounded from the attack.
Kenya, a recipient of considerable U.S. security training programs and intelligence gathering, has long been seen as a stabilizing influence in East Africa, but has suffered numerous terrorist-related attacks resulting from the presence of its soldiers in neighboring Somalia. Security experts in Kenya expect Obama to persuade Kenyatta to take national security more seriously.
"Westgate gave us a grand moment to increase our national security, and we did not seize the moment. One politician said, 'Westgate will be to Kenya what 9/11 was to America.' Oh, how we wish that was true!" Mwenda Mbijiwe, head of the Nairobi-based security consultant firm Eye on Security Ltd., told the Wall Street Journal. He added that the Kenyan government had done little to increase security after the Westgate attack.
