Africa on the move: Obama

NAIROBI — US President Barack Obama has praised Africa’s economic and business potential in a speech in Nairobi on the first full day of his visit to Kenya.

“Africa is on the move... People are being lifted out of poverty, incomes are up [and] the middle class is growing,” he told a business summit.

He later visited a memorial for those killed in the 1998 US embassy bombing.

His schedule includes security talks with Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta.

The trip which started on Friday has been described as a “homecoming” by Kenyan media.

It is Obama’s first visit as president to the country where his father was born.

Crowds cheered Obama’s motorcade as it travelled from the airport.

His first appearance in Nairobi on Saturday morning, was presiding over the opening of a Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Africa needed to be a “future hub of global growth”, Obama told young entrepreneurs and businesspeople, adding that governments had to ensure that corruption was not allowed to flourish.

He said Kenya had made “incredible progress” since his last visit.

“When I was here in Nairobi 10 years ago, it looked different from what it looks today,” he said.

Later, Obama visited the memorial park on the site of the US embassy where 213 people were killed in an al-qaeda truck bombing in 1998.