This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/30/barack-obama-kenya-visit

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Barack Obama to visit Kenya for first time as president Barack Obama to visit Kenya for first time as president
(about 1 hour later)
President Barack Obama will make his first trip as president to Kenya, the country of his father’s birth. Barack Obama is scheduled to make his first trip as president to Kenya – the country of his father’s birth – in July, the White House announced on Monday.
The White House says Obama will visit Kenya in July for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which brings together business leaders, international organizations and governments. This will be the first time the summit takes place in sub-Saharan Africa. Obama planned to hold bilateral meetings and to attend a global entrepreneurship summit, the announcement said.
Obama visited Kenya as a US senator, but never as president. During a trip to other African countries last year, he said he was likely to visit Kenya before leaving the White House. It will be Obama’s fourth trip to Kenya. He visited as a US senator in 2006 and made a trip with his then fiancee Michelle in 1992.
The president’s father came to the US from Kenya for school and returned to his home country after his son’s birth. The elder Obama died more than 30 years ago, though the president has other family still living in Kenya. Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, was born in western Kenya in 1936 and died there in a car accident in 1982.
The White House told reporters that it did not have any information on whether the president would visit family members in Kenya this summer, as he did on previous trips.
Obama’s first trip to Kenya was in 1987, when he sought his father’s roots in a quest that was documented in the final section of his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.
Conspiracy theorists have argued since before Obama was elected president that he was born in Kenya, thus rendering him ineligible to become US president.
Persuasive journalistic research has tied the explosion of the rumors in the spring of 2008 to an email chain kept up by supporters of the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who visited Kenya in 2012 as Obama’s secretary of state.
The “birther” rumor is occasionally revisited to this day, including by developer Donald Trump.
Obama was born in Hawaii. His birth certificate is available for examination on the White House website.
Obama has joked about the conspiracy theories. In an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this month, the president said he couldn’t drive. Kimmel, the comedian, asked him whether that was because he lacked a birth certificate.
“In Kenya we drive on the other side of the road,” Obama said, with a hint of weariness.