-A German university plans to honour Raila an academic exchange program in his name.
Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg has reawakened a link to Kenya’s late opposition giant, announcing it will inaugurate an academic exchange program in his name.
It is a gesture that transcends ceremony: it reopens a corridor of memory, ambition and unfinished dialogue between continents.
Raila Odinga, a figure as legendary in Kenyan politics as he was controversial, is being honoured at the very institution where his post-colonial journey took root.
In the 1960s, he left Kenya for East Germany – first learning the language at Leipzig’s Herder Institute, then moving to the Technical School in Magdeburg to study mechanical engineering.
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By 1969 or 1970 he had earned a Diplom-Ingenieur – the East German equivalent of a master’s in engineering – specialising in metal forming and welding.
Now, decades later, the university’s president, Jens Strackeljan, has visited Kenya’s embassy in Berlin to deliver condolences and present a commemorative plate while pledging a formal programme named in Odinga’s honour.
The exchange aims to bring Kenyan students and scholars to Germany and reciprocate German academic engagement in Kenya.
This is more than symbolism. It is institutional acknowledgement of a life lived in dual registers: engineering and politics. Odinga’s German education was not a mere footnote.
To many, it was foundational – a crucible in which technical rigour met public resolve.
Later his career would oscillate between lecturing, business, standardisation, and the turbulent battlegrounds of Kenyan politics.
Yet the path has not been without dispute. Sensational newspaper headlines once claimed Leipzig University denied he had graduated – misattributed fabrications swiftly debunked.
In truth, archival confirmation and Odinga’s own biography affirm his matriculation first at the Herder Institute, then at Magdeburg.
“In announcing this exchange programme, Magdeburg is not merely honouring an alumnus. It is invoking a narrative of shared knowledge, diaspora, and a continuous intellectual bridge between Germany and Kenya,” an online commentator wrote.
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The new programme carries possibility: for engineering students from Kisumu or Nairobi to tread the same labs where Odinga once turned a welding torch; for Germans to engage with Kenya’s energy, infrastructure and governance challenges firsthand.
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