Will former President Barack Obama move to Kenya in June 2023 as a Senate-confirmed special envoy for U.S. diplomacy? No, that's not true: The article that makes this claim has a disclaimer that states it's an April Fool's Day story. Some websites, however, have since published copies of this made-up story without the April Fool's Day disclaimer.
The article, published by FurtherAfrica on April 1, 2023, was titled "Former US President Obama to relocate to Kenya in June" (archived here). The same day, The Standard, a Kenyan news site, published the identical article. Both these websites featured an April Fool's Day disclaimer at the end of the article. Here is how the FurtherAfrica article began:
Former US President Barack Obama is resettling in Kenya for at least a year as Special Envoy for US Diplomacy (SED), a deployment which he said 'makes me truly grateful as I pay tribute to the land of my father- and forefathers'.
This is how the article appeared on FurtherAfrica at the time of writing:
(Source: furtherafrica.com screenshot taken on Fri Apr 07 14:00:59 2023 UTC)
This article contains a hidden hint about the prank: The name of the apartment block where Obama apparently would settle was "Yad Sloof Lirpa" -- "April Fools Day" spelled backwards.
But it is increasingly appearing that Obama could settle in Nyeri with locals noticing a grand, highly secured, ultramodern block, cryptically labelled 'Yad Sloof Lirpa' whose use the county government could not disclose, coming up behind Governor Mutahi Kahiga's official residence. The term is an old time slogan associated with alma mater, Occidental College, Columbia University.
FurtherAfrica finished the story with:
Happy April Fools' Day!
The Standard wrote:
Disclaimer: This was an April Fools Day Story.
GOTCHA!!!
There is no official information or authentic news report that Obama is planning to relocate to Kenya, his father's homeland. A refined Google search (archived here) for the specific term "Special Envoy for US Diplomacy" returns only duplicates of this prank article and fact checks debunking it.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Obama and Kenya can be found here.
