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01/12/2005:

"Britain's Brown Tours Africa Slum, Plants Tree"

NAIROBI (Reuters) - British finance minister Gordon Brown visited one of Africa's largest slums on Wednesday at the start of a tour of the continent aimed at making the fight against poverty a top priority for the world's richest nations.

Brown, starting his trip in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, toured classrooms and met teachers at Olympic Primary School on the edge of Kibera slum, a huge swathe of tin-roof shacks where barefoot children play beside trenches clogged with sewage.

Aides said he wanted to learn about the education policies of the Kenyan government, which launched free primary schooling in the country of 30 million on taking power in early 2003.

``I am very proud of what you are doing,'' Brown told the teachers. ``We want to work with you to provide universal primary education of the highest standard. We are delighted you are making such progress and we want to help you do more.''

In Kibera, home to about 800,000 people, as in many of the settlements that house up to 2 million of Nairobi's 3 million people, home often means a house of mud, scrap metal and cardboard where piped water and flushing toilets are unknown.

Amid buzzing flies, plastic bags and roving stray dogs, he walked along a nearby dirt road and greeted shopkeepers tending fruit and meat stalls. He did not enter the heart of the slum, where poverty is at its most desperate.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters