Pres­i­dent Uhuru Keny­atta on Sat­ur­day made a his­toric visit to So­ma­lia meet­ing the Kenyan troops serv­ing un­der the African Union Mis­sion at Dhob­ley Mil­i­tary in So­ma­lia

The Com­man­der-in-Chief, who was dressed in full mil­i­tary gear, thanked the troops them for their sac­ri­fice and ser­vice to their moth­er­land.

The Pres­i­dent told the sol­diers that Kenya will be for­ever in­debted to them for neu­tral­iz­ing the threat of Al-Shabaab.

“Your be­ing here in So­ma­lia has saved many lives, and for that Kenyans will for­ever be in­debted to you. Your pres­ence here has at least freed peo­ple of the fear of Al Shabaab,” Pres­i­dent Keny­atta said.

The Dhob­ley Mil­i­tary Camp is the head­quar­ters of the AMI­SOM, a nerve cen­tre and a log base for the UN.

The head of state also as­sured the sol­diers of the gov­ern­ments’ sup­port.

“We are talk­ing to the new So­mali Gov­ern­ment to em­pha­size to them the im­por­tance of build­ing their mil­i­tary so that you can go back home. That is our exit strat­egy,” Pres­i­dent Keny­atta added.

His came four days af­ter the State of the Na­tion ad­dress in which he paid glow­ing trib­ute to Kenyan men and women in uni­form for their com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to ser­vice to se­cure their coun­try.

“In de­fence of our moth­er­land, and in ful­fill­ing our in­ter­na­tional oblig­a­tions to pur­sue peace and se­cu­rity, we have lost some of our gal­lant sol­diers. These losses re­mind us of the threat that is upon us. I stand here to­day to say that these gal­lant sons and daugh­ters of Kenya have not fallen in vain. Their sac­ri­fice for our free­dom and our moth­er­land strength­ens our re­solve.” Pres­i­dent Keny­atta said in his State of the Na­tion ad­dress.

This was Pres­i­dent Keny­at­ta’s first visit to So­ma­lia in the con­text of lift­ing morale of Kenyan troops.

The Pres­i­dent has al­ready been to the So­mali Cap­i­tal Mo­gadishu pre­vi­ously on other state en­gage­ments.