Nairobi has gone into security lockdown as Pope Francis arrived Kenya on his first African visit.
But the Pope played down security fears as thousands of police and troops were deployed to the Kenyan capital with key roads closed amid a terror risk such as that posed by Al Qaida’s east African affiliate al-Shabab, which has staged a string of attacks against Kenya because they have troops deployed in Somalia.
But Pope Francis said he had come with ‘joy’ and that he was ‘more worried about the mosquitoes’.
A packed schedule will see the pontiff visit a Nairobi slum, a shrine to Christian martyrs in Uganda and both a mosque and a refugee camp in the Central African Republic.
Francis is the fourth pope to visit Africa.
