Dreams from My Father: U.S.A President Obama finds a way to visit Kenya, finally.

The White House late last month announced that Obama will travel to Nairobi on July 23 to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which will take place in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time.

Initially meant to promote innovation and deepen business ties between the US and Muslim communities worldwide, it last year took place in Morocco.

This will be the first time Obama has attended the summit in a foreign country.

It had been one of the worst-kept secrets that he would look to spot a gap to visit the country where several of his relatives still live.

His father was an economist from western Kenya and, though Obama was never close to him or spent much time in the country, many Kenyans claim him as one of their own.

An annual event backed by the US government, the summit was unveiled by Obama in Cairo on June 2009, in what was his first trip to the continent as president (he’d visited as senator), when he also made a one-day stop over in Ghana.

Obama’s visit will be seen by Nairobi as completing its rehabilitation of Kenyatta back into the international fold, and will make for huge political capital.    

Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” first published in 1995 is a story of the events of his  life up until his entry into law school in 1988. He first travelled to Kenya before he went to law school, and faced the bitter truth of his father’s conflicted life.

He can at the minimum expect rock star treatment. And now visiting his father’s homeland as the world’s most powerful man, it will probably not be lost on him how far he has travelled.

Credit: mgafrica