US President Barack Obama is set to embark on his first visit to Kenya, his father’s homeland, as president this coming July, the White House announced on Monday.
The White House has confirmed the President Obama will visit Kenya in July to attend the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which will gather business leaders, government official and entrepreneurs from around the world.
The summit has been held annually since 2009 and it will be the first time that the event will be hosted in sub-Saharan Africa.
While it will be Obama’s first time to visit Kenya as president of the United States, it will be his fourth trip to the sub-Saharan Africa during his presidency.
The last time Obama visited Kenya was in 2006, when he was still US senator
“His trip will build on the success of the August 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit and continue our efforts to work with countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya, to accelerate economic growth, strengthen democratic institutions, and improve security,” the White House said in a statement.
Obama’s itinerary in Kenya, other than attending the summit, has not been disclosed yet as the White House said Obama may not make other stops on the trip.
Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, was a Kenyan senior governmental economist. He is a central figure of his son’s memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995).
Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States, where he went to the University of Hawaii.
There, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961 and divorced three years later, after having a son, Barack II, named after him. The elder Obama later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. – BusinessNewsAsia.com
[Featured image credit: “Elephants at Amboseli national park against Mount Kilimanjaro” by Amoghavarsha amoghavarsha.com – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]