Former Kenyan premier Raila Odinga, a key figure in African democracy efforts, dies at 80

People react in the Kibera neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya, to the death of Kenya former prime minister Raila Odinga Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Odinga died of a heart attack in Indiaat the age of 80. (AP Photo/Samson Otieno)

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Raila Odinga, a former prime minister of Kenya and perennial presidential candidate whose populist campaigns challenged one-party rule, rattled authorities and gave him outsized influence on political life in the East African country, died Wednesday of a heart attack while travelling in India. He was 80.

His death was confirmed by Devamatha Hospital in Kerala State, where he was taken after he collapsed during a morning walk. A hospital statement said Odinga didn’t respond to resuscitation efforts.

There were sombre scenes at his home in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where mourners included national leaders. Tributes cited his commitment to democracy.

President William Ruto declared a seven-day mourning period during which national flags will fly at half-staff, calling Odinga’s death an “immense and immeasurable loss.” Odinga will have a state funeral, Ruto said.

Odinga had recently signed a political pact with Ruto that saw his opposition party involved in government policy-making and its members appointed to the cabinet.

But his ambition was to become Kenya’s president, and he ran five times over three decades -- sometimes with enough support that many believed he might win.

He came close to taking the presidency in 2007, when he narrowly lost to incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a disputed election marred by ethnic violence. And in 2017, a court nullified the presidential election -- a first in Africa -- after Odinga’s challenge but he decided to boycott the fresh vote, asserting it wouldn’t be credible without reforms.

Although Odinga never succeeded at becoming president, for many he was a revered figure and statesman whose activism helped steer Kenya into a vibrant multiparty democracy.

Violence followed 2007 presidential bid

Odinga, a member of the Luo ethnic group in western Nyanza province, reached the peak of his political career in the 2007 presidential race, winning the support of leaders from other tribes and drawing massive crowds during campaign events.

Although Kibaki, of the Kikuyu ethnic group, had posted good economic figures in his first term, his government had been weakened by corruption scandals. The official results -- Odinga’s 44 per cent against Kibaki’s 46 per cent -- was the closest in Kenyan history.

Odinga’s camp rejected that result, provoked in part by an unreliable electoral authority whose leader said later that he did not know whether Kibaki had won.

Protests erupted in Nairobi almost immediately after Kibaki’s inauguration, and violence spread to other parts of Kenya as people were targeted along ethnic lines: Luos and Kalenjins targeting Kikuyus, and Kikuyus mobilizing reprisal attacks.

Hundreds of people were killed in days of violence that shattered Kenya’s status as a stable democracy in a volatile region.

Although Odinga was never accused of inciting violence, others -- including future presidents Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta -- were. They were among six suspects who faced criminal charges related to post-election violence when the International Criminal Court opened its investigation in 2010.

The case never yielded any successful prosecutions, with charges withdrawn, terminated or tossed out amid claims of witness intimidation and political interference.

After the turmoil, Odinga became prime minister in a unity government put together with the mediation of the international community.

Early activism, detention and exile

Raila Amolo Odinga was born on Jan. 7, 1945, in Kisumu, a city on the shores of Lake Victoria near the border with Uganda.

The son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vice-president, he attended local schools until he left to study engineering in East Germany. Upon returning in the 1970s, he taught at the University of Nairobi and started a range of businesses, including a successful one selling liquid petroleum gas cylinders.

Odinga first rose to prominence as a political activist fighting against the one-party rule of President Daniel arap Moi in the 1980s. He was linked to a failed coup plot by a group of air force officers who tried to take power in 1982.

Some of the coup leaders were convicted of treason and executed, and the names of Odinga and his father came up during interrogations of some suspects. Odinga was accused of treason, and though the charge was later dropped, he spent much of the next decade in detention.

Odinga described the harsh conditions of imprisonment and alleged torture, including an assault by a police officer who hit him with a wooden table leg. He insisted that while he had been involved in educating and mobilizing people to bring about change in Kenya at the time of the coup attempt, he had never advocated violence.

He briefly went into exile in Europe in 1991 after he was freed.

A return to Kenya, and politics

Odinga returned to Kenya in 1992 and won a seat in the national assembly as an opposition lawmaker representing a constituency in Nairobi, winning massive support among people disaffected by official corruption and poverty.

In 2001 he accepted a position in government as Moi’s energy minister, unsuccessfully angling for a ticket as the ruling party’s standard-bearer.

He was instrumental in the rise of Kibaki, an economist without a popular touch that he backed in the 2002 presidential race and who would be his rival in the disputed election of 2007.

Even as he grew older, appearing drowsy at campaign rallies, Odinga never seemed to lose his zest for politics, and even some of his rivals conceded that he was an excellent mobilizer.

In 2017, speaking on civil disobedience after he lost his fourth presidential campaign, Odinga told The Associated Press that street protests were a democratic measure permitted by the country’s constitution.

“If a regime is undemocratic, if a regime does not enjoy legitimacy, the people are justified to resist that regime,” he said.

Odinga’s last campaign for president was in 2022, when he was backed by the outgoing president, Kenyatta, in a race against Ruto. He lost again and went on to assert that he had been cheated of victory, and launched a wave of street protests.

Earlier in 2025, he lost a bid to become the executive head of the African Union Commission, the body that runs the continental African Union.

Odinga’s survivors include his wife, Ida.

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By Evelyne Musambi And Rodney Muhumuza

Muhumuza contributed from Kampala, Uganda.