Ben Carson talks up Kenyan roots ahead of Africa trip

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Ben Carson is coming to Africa. But he might want to get his geography right first.

Carson, the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, told a talk radio show Monday that he will visit Kenya, Zambia and Nigeria for a week starting Dec. 27.

The Africa trip is Carson's latest attempt to burnish his foreign policy credentials, coming on the heels of a visit to Jordan last month in which he met with Syrian refugees.

Carson, who has shed popularity in polls of Republican voters, has admitted his campaign for the presidency may be flagging due to a lack of foreign policy experience. On international affairs he has made several embarrassing blunders, including pronouncing Hamas like "hummus."

Carson told U.S. radio host Hugh Hewitt that he will visit Kenya because of his ancestral connections to the area, noting that, "my ancestors are from the Kenya-Tanzania region, the Turkana tribe."

"I've had all of that traced back," he added.

While some Kenyans have expressed excitement about the prospect of another American president with Kenyan roots, others quickly pointed out that the Turkana people traditionally live in Kenya's northwest — far from the country's border with Tanzania.

This isn't the first time Carson has brought up his Kenyan background: Earlier this year, while defending his comment that Obamacare was the worst thing since slavery, Carson said he had a Turkana ancestor.

His planned trip to Kenya follows a high-profile tour by Pope Francis last month, as well as President Barack Obama's visit to his father's homeland in July.

In addition to Kenya, Carson said he will visit Zambia because of his connection to formerly conjoined twins Joseph and Luka Banda. Carson was famously part of a surgical team that successfully separated them in 1997.

"They were joined at the top of the head facing in opposite directions almost 18 years ago and this is the year they graduate from high school," he told the radio show.

In Nigeria he will visit a medical school named after him, and will seek to learn about the Nigerian economy as well as the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

"I want to get an idea from the people what the effects of the Boko Haram are, what people are thinking, to see what the economic situation is there," he said.

Carson said that being able to "see things firsthand" will help him "make decisions based on real information as opposed to filtered information."

"I think a lot of our policy in the future is going to affect Africa," he declared.

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost. Its content was created separately to Paste BN.

MORE FROM GLOBALPOST: