KENYA: U.S. Senator Barack Obama says corruption inhibits investment in Kenya on his first official visit.

Thousands of Kenyans thronged on Friday (August 25) to welcome Kenya's favourite son, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, on the second day of his visit to his father's homeland. Shouting "Obama talk to us", Kenyans surged forward and peered through iron gates as Obama left the site of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Kenya's capital Nairobi. Obama, who had visited relatives before, was on his first official trip to the world's poorest continent, which began on Sunday in South Africa. Born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother, the 45-year-old Harvard trained lawyer was elevated to the United States Senate in 2004. Obama, of Illinois, said he held a meeting earlier with President Mwai Kibaki whom he told that corruption was inhibiting investment in east Africa's largest economy. "Kenya does not yet have the kind of transparent accountable government that encourages development. The fact is, that at every level the people of Kenya still had to suffer through corruption at the hands of government officials," Obama told reporters in Nairobi. A dizzyingly array of corruption scandals have rocked Kenya in recent months, causing deep disappointment with foreign donors and Kenyans. Obama said that Darfur was also on his agenda as violence was still going on. He said Sudan should open the doors for UN peacekeepers to come in and help African Union peacekeepers who are stretched to the limit. "We are on the verge of an enormous humanitarian crisis if things completely collapse there and it becomes a situation where the international aid community can not operate. So we got to have a sense of urgency about getting peacekeeping forces in there. Unfortunately the world has been distracted by Iraq first and now most recently what has been happening between Israel and Hizbollah," Obama said. He had earlier held talks with Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki at Statehouse Nairobi. As a rising star in the party, Democrats have promoted Obama as the new face of the party who can appeal across racial lines. He is the only black member of the Senate. Obama is expected to travel to his father's native village in western Kenya on Saturday (August 26). Obama's parents met while his father was an exchange student in Hawaii. His father left the family when Obama was two-years-old and returned to Kenya, where he worked as an economist for the government. He died in a car crash in 1982.

ITN Source | August 26, 2006

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