US President Donald Trump Wins Confidence of Majority of Kenyans

A huge number of Kenyans have confidence that United States President Donald Trump will perform exceptionally on world affairs, a new global survey shows.

The survey results released on Monday by Washington-based Pew Research Center shows that Trump has 56 percent approval rating among Kenyans.

This approval is twice as high as the global median of 27 per cent who expressed confidence in Trump's conduct on international affairs. During the study, 1,039 Kenyans were interviewed face-to-face in English and Swahili. 

53 percent of Kenyans also  expressed confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping against a global median of 34 per cent confidence.

Germany's Angela Merkel has 43 percent approval among Kenyans followed by France's Emmanuel Macron (46 percent) and Vladimir Putin of Russia (38 percent).

Further, 70 percent of Kenyans have a favourable view of the United States against a global median of 50 percent. Kenyans also strongly prefer US world leadership (66 percent) to that of China (33 percent).

"Large majorities say the US doesn’t consider the interests of countries like theirs when making foreign policy decisions," the Pew Centre notes in a summary of the poll's findings. 

"As has largely been the case since Pew Research Centre’s first Global Attitudes survey in 2002, attitudes toward the US in sub-Saharan Africa are largely positive," the not-for-profit polling group notes.