US President Barack Obama told Kenyans on Sunday (July 26) that there was "no limit to what you can achieve" but said they had to deepen democracy, tackle corruption and end exclusion based on gender or ethnicity.
Obama made the statement during one of his meetings with kenyans in Nairobi in his first visit to his father's homeland.
Obama, after political talks on Saturday with President Uhuru Kenyatta on security and business, in his speech to a packed sports hall in Nairobi struck a personal note, talking of his own experience and Kenya's in the five decades since independence.
"I am proud to be the first American president to come to Kenya. And of course, I am the first Kenyan American to be president of the United States," Obama told the crowd, after being introduced by his sister Auma.
To a mixture of applause and laughter, he described being picked up at the airport on his first visit to Kenya in the 1980s by his sister in an old VW Beetle that often broke down. This time, he arrived on Air Force One and traveled in the president's armored car nicknamed "the Beast."
"As Auma was saying, the first time I came to Kenya, things were a little different. When I arrived at Kenyatta airport, the airline had lost my bags. That doesn't happen on Air Force One. They always have my luggage on Air Force One," he told the crowd of 4,500, many of whom had secured tickets to attend.
Obama spoke of Kenya's challenge in dealing with attacks by the Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab, and promised the United States would stand by Kenya as a "partner".
After Kenya, Obama travels on Sunday to Ethiopia, a nation brought to its knees by famine in the 1980s that now boasts some of the fastest economic growth rates on the continent.
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