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.

Brown and Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai later planted a tree at a park where she and three other women were clubbed unconscious by police in 1992 during a protest by 50 women calling for the then government of President Daniel arap Moi to release political prisoners.

Brown is to push for an agreement on a planned International Finance Facility, which seeks to double aid by leveraging existing budgets in the capital markets and give $50 billion more in aid each year to the poorest nations.

"This is a bold new proposal from the United Kingdom which we hope will win international support," Brown said. "We have picked up the support of more than 50 countries already."

He later flew to Tanzania, where he visited villagers outside the commercial capital Dar-es-Salaam, who told him they wanted clean water, electricity and flushing toilets.

He is also due to visit Mozambique and South Africa on a week-long trip aimed at keeping debt relief and development high on the agenda for the world's richest nations this year.

Both Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair have said they intend to use Britain's presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations to fight poverty on the continent.

DEBT RELIEF

It also takes place amid high hopes that the outpouring of sympathy and billions of dollars pledged around the world to help nations devastated by the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami will put debt relief for the world's poorest nations centre stage.

Brown's plan calls for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank (ADB) to cancel poor countries' debt. Britain has pledged to lead by paying 10 percent of what is owed to the ADB and the World Bank by some 30 countries.

Brown's plan also envisages scrapping trade barriers, particularly protectionist farm policies that hurt poor nations.