Which American diplomat is currently visiting Kenya?
Over 2,000 delegates from the US and across Africa will meet in Nairobi from Tuesday morning for the annual AGOA forum to discuss ways in which the continent can benefit from preferential trade with America. The meeting, at Kenyatta International Conference Centre, will be officially opened on Wednesday by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Endorsement Her presence at the head of a 250-strong delegation is being taken as an endorsement, by the administration of President Obama, of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade agreement under which the US opens its market to African countries. The trade agreement came into force when Mr Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, was the US president. The meeting is also being seen as a diplomatic coup for Kenya, recovering from the 2008 election violence and smarting from Mr Obama’s decision to visit Ghana rather than Kenya on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. Mr Obama, whose father was Kenyan, has been critical of the Kenyan leaders
KISMAYO, Somalia, Jan. 5 — The State Department’s top diplomat for Africa plans to visit Mogadishu, the violence-scarred Somali capital, on Sunday, American officials said Friday. It would be the first time in more than a decade that a high-ranking United States official has set foot there. But Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged the world’s Muslims on Friday to turn Somalia into a battlefield and use suicide attacks. These developments were part of Somalia’s transformation after Ethiopian-led forces ousted the once powerful Islamist movement from the capital last week and helped install a potentially viable government there for the first time in over 16 years. American officials said the schedule for the diplomat, Jendayi E. Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was still tentative, but that she planned to be in Mogadishu for four hours to meet with officials of the transitional government and leading Somali intellectuals. The United States has ha
Expectations are high as Kenyans await the arrival Tuesday of the U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the capital, Nairobi. Clinton’s Kenya visit forms part of a seven-nation African trip that is set to depict Africa as an important part of President Barack Obama’s agenda. She is expected to meet President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga as well as other government officials. But human rights groups hope Clinton will pressure Nairobi to commit to punishing the masterminds of the 2008 post-election violence that led to the death of at least 1300 Kenyans. Sources: http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2009-08-04-voa3.
