President Barack Obama will make his first trip as president to Kenya, the country of his father's birth. The White House says Obama will visit Kenya in July for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which brings together business leaders, international organizations and governments. Obama has visited Kenya three times in the past, including once as a U.S. senator, but never as president. Scroll down for video . Then a senator, Barack Obama is pictured here in Kenya in 2006 with Maasai 'mamas.' Basecamp Masai Mara in Mara National Reserve in Kenya is a Scandinavian initiative that aims to develop a partnership with the native Masai people. Obama will visit the country again in July, the White House announced today - his first visit to Kenya since becoming president in 2009 . Obama is pictured here during a 1988 trip at his family home in the Kenyan homestead of Alego. From L to R are Barack Obama, Grandmother Sarah,  Auma Obama (Barack's half sister) and Kezia Obama (Barack's stepmother) In this August 25, 2006  photo Senator Obama is greated by an enthusistic crowd in Nairobi. During the long-promised visit this July, Obama will attend a Global Entrepreneurship Summit in the east African nation . During a trip to other African countries last year, he said he was likely to visit Kenya before leaving the White House. The president's father came to the United States from Kenya for school, where he met Obama's mother Ann Dunham. The couple divorced when the younger Obama was two years old and Barack Obama, Sr. returned to his home country. The elder Barack Obama died more than 30 years ago, though the president has other family still living in Kenya. A controversy during his 2008 campaign for president, and again, albeit to a lesser extent, in his 2012 bid for re-election, was a rumor that Barack Obama the younger was not born in Hawaii as stated and was instead born in Kenya. The charge stems, in part, from a 'fact-checking error' a literary agent made in materials promoting Obama in 1991. The booklet, produced by agency Acton & Dystel stated that Obama was 'born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.' The editor of the text, Miriam Goderich, took credit for the mistake in 2012, telling Yahoo News, 'There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.' The president's father, also named Barack Obama, is a Kenyan native. According to the younger Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama Sr. met his mother Ann Dunham while attending college in Hawaii. The couple divorced after three years of marriage in 1964, and the president saw his father just one more time after that before his death in a car accident in 1982. The president's first known trip to Kenya, as detailed in his book, was in 1988, when he spent five weeks there. He returned to Kenya in 1992 with Michelle, then his fiance, and again  in 2006 during his first year in the U.S. Senate. The White House said today that Obama would visit Kenya in July for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit - his first trip to his father's homeland since he was elected to higher office in 2008. Some 'birthers' as they are known as continue to believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, however, and is therefore ineligible to be president based on constitutional requirements for the office. His first known trip to the country was in 1988, when he spent five weeks there, according to his memoir Dreams from My Father. He returned to Kenya in 1992 with Michelle, then his fiance, and his half sister Auma, and again  in 2006 during his first year in the U.S. Senate. It was not immediately clear whether the president would be accompanied on the July trip by his wife and daughters. The White House would not say on Monday whether Obama would visit with family while in town, either. It made no mention of Obama's personal ties with the country in its announcement but did point out that he has visited sub-Saharan Africa more than any other sitting president. 'Just as President Kennedy’s historic visit to Ireland in 1963 celebrated the connections between Irish-Americans and their forefathers, President Obama’s trip will honor the strong historical ties between the United States and Kenya – and all of Africa – from the millions of Americans who trace their ancestry to the African continent, to the more than 100,000 Americans that live in or visit Kenya each year,' it said in a blog post. Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, last year visited Washington at the invitation of Obama as part of the White House's first-ever Africa Leaders Summit. Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu predicted Monday that Obama's trip to Kenya would likely gin up 'hard right' Republicans who still think he was born in the African country. He also suggested that with dwindling time to travel on the government's dime, Obama is more concerned about seeing the world than the United States' national security. 'He’s going to take advantage of the last two years and go to all the places he wants to go,' Sununu said, according to Politico. Making mention of the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran and the instability in Yemen, Sununu told Fox News, 'I hope the president is paying attention there and doing more focus on that than making travel plans.'
Obama will visit in July for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit . President has visited Kenya three times in the past, including once as a U.S. senator, but hasn't been back since moving to the White House . The son of a Kenyan native, rumors have persisted for years that the younger Barack Obama was not actually born in the U.S. The elder Barack Obama died more than 30 years ago, though the president has other family still living in Kenya .