President Obama departed this week for his first trip to Kenya since taking office. He will meet with the Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, and attend the sixth annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi. The focus of the trip is strengthening U.S.-Kenya counterterrorism cooperation and promoting Kenya’s economic growth.
Obama and Kenyatta will discuss increasing U.S. assistance to Kenya’s security services, including improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to track terrorism threats emanating from neighboring Somalia, home of the violent militant group al-Shabaab. According to data cited by New York Times, al-Shabab has killed more than 600 people in Kenya since 2012, including the assault on a Nairobi shopping center that killed 67 people.
The other item on the agenda is the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Despite its security concerns, Kenya enjoys a growing economy and relative political stability. Known as the “Silicon Valley of Africa,” it has the fastest broadband network due to a large number of international undersea cables. Google, Cisco Systems, Intel, Nokia, and Microsoft all have operations in Kenya, benefiting from generous government subsidies, local investor interest, and low barriers to entry into the technology market.
