WASHINGTON, Jan 6: President-elect Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother will be among the millions swarming Washington for the Inauguration.

Sarah Obama, the mother of Obama’s Kenyan-born father, will join the Kenyan government, African Union and African diplomats for an unofficial inaugural ball on Jan 20. Organisers say Kenya’s foreign minister and the Boys Choir of Kenya also plan to travel to the United States for the invitation-only event at a Washington-area hotel.

Obama was born in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya. Obama is a US citizen and the country’s first African-American president.

Obama’s father left when he a child and died in 1982. Obama was not especially close to his African family although he visited them on a 2006 trip to Kenya.—AP