Raila Odinga (Kenya)

Positions
From	To	Organisation	Position
2008		Office of the Prime Minister	Prime Minister
2008		National Economic & Social Council	Council Member
2006		Orange Democratic Movement	President
2002	2005	National Rainbow Coalition	Member & Rainbow Movement Representative
1994	1997	National Development Party of Kenya	President & National Presidential Candidate
1992		Langata Constituency	Member of Parliament
1992	1994	Forum For the Restoration of Democracy - FORD Kenya	Vice Chairman of the General Purposes Committee
1982	1991		3 periods of incarceration - for treason & involvement with the Kenya Revolutionary Movement
1975	1982	Kenya Bureau of Standards	Deputy Director
1970	1974	University of Nairobi	Assistant Lecturer - Mechanical Engineering

Date of Birth	7 Jan 1945
Political Affiliation	ODM
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Notes	He left home at 15 to attend school in East Germany and eventually returned to Kenya with a master's degree in mechanical engineering and experience of life on both sides of the Berlin Wall. His Kenyan passport allowed him to pass freely through Checkpoint Charlie, and his friends in the communist East would send him to bring back fancy watches, TVs and other forbidden luxuries from the West. He served as a translator when Louis Armstrong visited the country on an Iron Curtain tour in 1965. And yet a speech by Fidel Castro impressed Odinga so much that years later he would name his firstborn son after the Cuban dictator. "I've lived in both sides of the world," says Odinga. "I'm better placed than most people who only hear about these things in books." (Today he owns five cars, including a pearl gray Jaguar and a ruby red Hummer.) [ Newsweek (US) - 22 Jan 2008 - http://www.newsweek.com/id/97058 ] For an official biography of Odinga, see his personal campaign website at http://www.raila07.com/about.html [ Retrieved on 16 JAN 2008 - http://www.raila07.com/about.html ]

Record last updated on 23 JUN 2008