Raila Amolo Odinga (7 January 1945 – 15 October 2025) was a Kenyan politician who served as the Prime Minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013. He was the Member of Parliament of Langata Constituency from 1992 to 2013 and was the Leader of Opposition in Kenya from 2013 on. He was the leader of Azimio la Umoja – One Kenya Coalition.
Odinga ran for President of Kenya five times, with none of his attempts being successful. Each time, Odinga alleged electoral fraud.
In 1997, he finished third as the candidate of the National Development Party (NDP). In 2007, he ran again for the presidency under the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and lost to Mwai Kibaki. In 203, 2017 and 2022, Odinga was the runner-up as a candidate for the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD), National Supper Alliance (NADA) and Azimio la Umoja respectively. After his loss, he filed for petition against President-elect William Ruto at the Supreme Court of Kenya. The court decided against him, and Odinga pledged to respect its ruling.
In February 2024, he announced his candidacy for the African Union Commission chairperson, but was defeated by Mohamoud Ali Youssouf in the February 2025 ballot. On 15 October 2025, Odinga died of cardiac arrest in Koothattukulam, India at the age of 80.
Early life and education
Kenya Colony
Raila Odinga was born at the Anglican Church Missionary Society Hospital in Maseno, Kisumu district, Nyanza Province on 7 January 1945 to Mary Juma Odinga and Jaramogi Ogiga Odinga. His father served as the first Vice President of Kenya under President Jomo Kenyatta.
He was a member of the Luo ethnic group. He went to Kisumu Union Primary, Maranda primary in Bondo and Maranda High School where he studied until 1962, when he was transferred by his father to Germany.
East Germany
He spent the next two years at the Herder Institution, which trained foreign students in the German language and was part of the philological faculty at the University of Leipzig in East Germany.
He received a scholarship that in 1965 sent him to the Technische Hochschule (technical college) of Magdeburg (now a part of Otton Von Guericke University Magdeburg in the GDR. In 1970, he graduated with a certificate in Welding. While studying in East Germany during the Cold War as a Kenyan he was able to visit West Berlin through the Check Point Charlie. When visiting West Berlin, he used to smuggle goods not available in East Berlin and bring them to his friends in East Germany.
Career
Business and entrepreneurship
Odinga returned to Kenya in 1970 and in 1971 he founded the Standard Processing Equipment Construction & Erection Ltd (later renamed East African Spectre), the only company manufacturing liquid petroleum gas cylinders in Kenya.
Civil service career
In 1974, Odinga was appointed group standards manager of the Kenya Bureau of Standards. After holding this position for 4 years, he was promoted to be the deputy director in 1978, a post he held until his 1982 detention.
Political career
1982 Kenyan coup attempt
At 3 a.m. on Sunday, 1 August 1982, a group of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force led by senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka who attempted to overthrow the government of then president Daniel Arap Moi. After the failed attempt to overthrow him, President Moi re-organized Kenya’s security architecture, staffing it with his loyalists and then he ensured a law was passed in parliament that gave him emergency powers while placing the provincial administration under the office of the president.
Odinga was arrested and charged with treason after being accused of being among the masterminds of the 1982 coup. He was released six years later in February 1988 but detained again in August of the same year to be released in June 1989.
Detention
In an era of unrelenting human rights abuse by the Kenyan government, Odinga was placed under house arrest for seven months after evidence seemed to implicate him along with his late father Oginga Odinga for collaborating with the plotters of a failed coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi in 1982. Hundreds of Kenyan civilians and thousands of rebel soldiers died in the coup. Several foreigners also died. Odinga was later charged with treason and detained without trial for six years.
A biography released 14 years later in July 2006, apparently with Odinga’s approval, indicated that Odinga was far more involved in the attempted coup than he had previously admitted. After its publication, some Members of Parliament in Kenya called for Odinga to be arrested and charged, but the statute limitations had already passed and the information contained in the biography did not amount to an open confession on his part. Among some of his most painful experiences was when his mother died in 1984 but the prison wardens took two months to inform him of her death.
He was released on 6 February 1988 only to be rearrested in September 1988 for his pro-democracy and human rights agitation at a time when the country continued to descend deep into the throes of poor governance and the despotism of single-party rule. Multi-party democracy Kenya, was then, by law, a one party state. His encounters with the authoritarian government generated an aura of intrigue about him and it was probably due to this that his political followers christened him “Agwambo”, Luo for “The Mystery” or “Unpredictable”, or “Jakom”, meaning chairman.
Odinga was released on 12 June 1989, only to be incarcerated again on 5 July 1990, together with Kenneth Matiba, and former Nairobi mayor Charles Rubia, both multiparty system and human rights crusaders. Odinga was finally released on 21 June 1991, and in October he fled the country to Norway amid indications that the increasingly corrupt Kenyan government was attempting to assassinate him without success.
