Raila Listed Among 100 Most Notable Alumni of Leipzig University

Amid questions about his academic qualifications, it has emerged that Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya coalition party presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s name is listed among the 100 most notable alumni of the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Nation reported that Raila’s name is on the list of renowned individuals alongside immediate former chancellor of Germany Angela Markell and philosopher Fredric Nietzsche.

The university’s biography described Odinga, 77, as a university teacher, a businessperson, and a politician who previously served as Kenya’s Prime, leader of opposition in Kenya, as well as Minister for Energy, Roads, Public Works, and Housing.

“Odinga was appointed High Representative for Infrastructure Development at the African Union Commission in 2018,” the biography reads.

On Thursday, Deputy President William Ruto questioned Odinga’s academic credentials, saying that what Odinga studied and in which institution remains unknown.

The deputy president challenged Odinga, who is giving his fifth stab at the presidency, to make public his academic papers and show Kenyans some of the people he schooled with.

"Where did he school, what, with who, who taught him? You cannot answer all that yet you are telling us he has a degree," Ruto posed.

Raila’s biography on his website indicates that he went to Kisumu Union Primary School, Maranda Primary and Maranda High School where he stayed until 1962. He spent the next two years at the Herder Institute, a part of the philological faculty at the University of Leipzig in East Germany. 

He then received a scholarship that in 1965 sent him to the Technical School, Magdeburg (now a part of Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg) in the GDR. In 1970, he graduated with a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering.