Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has died at the age of 80, a source in his office told Reuters on Wednesday, without providing further details.
Indian newspaper Mathrubhumi earlier reported that Odinga, who had been receiving medical treatment in the southern Indian city of Kochi, suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A towering figure in Kenyan politics for more than four decades, Odinga was both a symbol of opposition resilience and a key architect of democratic reform. Despite losing all five of his presidential bids, his influence reshaped the country’s political landscape.
As an opposition leader, Odinga’s political career was marked by both triumphs and turmoil. His leadership of mass protests following the disputed 2007 presidential election plunged Kenya into one of its darkest chapters, with more than 1,300 people killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in post-election violence. Yet he later played a central role in national reconciliation efforts, culminating in the formation of a coalition government in which he served as prime minister from 2008 to 2013.
Odinga’s activism helped pave the way for two of Kenya’s most significant democratic milestones: the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1991 and the promulgation of a new constitution in 2010.
Born in 1945 in Maseno, western Kenya, Odinga was the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the country’s first vice president and an early advocate for political pluralism. Over the decades, Raila Odinga became a fixture in Kenya’s struggle for democracy — often at great personal cost, including years of detention without trial under the regime of President Daniel arap Moi.
Odinga’s death marks the end of an era in Kenyan politics and leaves a void in the country’s opposition leadership.
