On June 10, 2008, then President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga launched Kenya Vision 2030, the long-term plan to transform Kenya into “a globally competitive and prosperous nation with a high quality of life by 2030.”
For Mr Odinga, then 63, being around to see the full 22-year journey seemed improbable. Speaking after a stirring address by youth representative Caren Wakoli, he picked up her theme with a touch of humour: “When you [Wakoli] get there (in 2030), tell them to remember us,” he said, urging the next generation to carry the torch.
It almost seemed like Mr Odinga was poised to defy his own quip and reach 2030.
However, like Moses of the Bible, he was not going to live to see the symbolic Canaan he so often promised his followers: a highly industrialising nation with decent jobs, universal healthcare and shared prosperity.
The former Prime Minister died on October 15, 2025, five years before 2030, leaving some unfinished business—including many flagship projects he and the late Kibaki envisioned in the Vision 2030 blueprint.
Mr Odinga, who died at 80, was eulogised chiefly as a towering politician. Yet behind the firebrand persona—mocked by rivals as the “Lord of Poverty”—ran a consistent economic reform agenda across his five unsuccessful presidential bids: decentralising power and resources, building safety nets for the poor, creating jobs through manufacturing, fighting corruption and taming the cost of living.
Two months ago, Mr Odinga revisited Vision 2030, arguing that it should be put squarely back on the table and that the National Economic and Social Council (NESC)—the think tank that helped lay the groundwork for the plan—should be revived to drive coordination.
“So that all those flagship projects that we coined during that time can be revived and we make sure they are all moving together,” he told the 2025 Devolution Conference in Homa Bay.
“This will help us as a country. I am saying this as a Kenyan patriot who is thinking about Kenya—Kenya number one, Kenya number two, Kenya number three.”
Vision 2030 places heavy emphasis on infrastructure, including the Sh2.5 trillion Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor meant to turbo-charge the economy through a network of seaports, airports, roads and railways.
Launched in March 2012 under the Grand Coalition government, a few LAPSSET projects are complete while many remain pending, leaving a significant infrastructure gap Mr Odinga had wished would be plugged. Lamu Port’s first three deep-water berths are operational, supported by the 113.5-km Garsen–Witu–Lamu highway.
Regionally, the Moyale One-Stop Border Post with Ethiopia is in service. Still outstanding are the standard-gauge railway (SGR) from Lamu inland, the Lokichar–Lamu crude-oil pipeline and the resort cities/airport upgrades, which remain at planning or partial-delivery stage.
Having championed the SGR concept, Mr Odinga hoped to see the line extended from Naivasha to Kisumu and onward to Malaba on the Ugandan border.
As African Union High Representative for Infrastructure, during the ‘Handshake’ era, he is understood to have accompanied President Uhuru Kenyatta to China to seek additional financing. They did not secure funds, but the current administration—working with Mr Odinga under the broad-based government—says plans are at an advanced stage to launch the SGR extension to western Kenya and onward to Uganda.
Increased manufacturing and value-addition also lay at the heart of Mr Odinga’s idyll. Since 1997, his manifestos have contained a plan to cut production costs, anchor firms in industrial parks, finance micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and enforce fair competition to unlock jobs.
The 2007 manifesto tied factories to devolved growth poles; the 2013 campaign promise synced with Vision 2030’s industrial parks and SEZs.
The manifesto of his National Super Alliance (Nasa), the pre-election political alliance that backed his presidential bid in 2017, set a 15 percent manufacturing-to-GDP target within five years; Azimio’s 2022 plan raised that to 30 percent and proposed a single business permit and “buy-Kenyan” procurement.
All assumed cheaper logistics, reliable power and contract certainty. Vision 2030’s benchmark is 20 percent by 2030, but manufacturing has hovered around seven to eight percent in recent years, reflecting high energy costs and weak demand, even as services grow faster.
Mr Odinga envisaged an economy where smart agriculture, a vibrant manufacturing and social spending would cut the growing youth unemployment, Unlike his predecessors, President William Ruto faces a generation of uncompromising young Kenyans desperate for economic opportunities, who can mobilise amorphously through social media, bypassing opposition parties and leaders.
With up to 800,000 young people entering the job market each year, Gen Z are more educated than their elders, but also more likely to be unemployed, according to a report by Afrobarometer, a pollster.
Mr Odinga put money behind his beliefs. In 1971, he and his father founded East African Spectre to make gas cylinders, applying his engineering training.
“He did not consider himself just a director; he was part of us,” said Hudson Chitala, the company’s general manager.
“While other directors headed to the boardroom, he went straight to the factory… in fact, if you heard the noise in the factory, you knew he had come,” added Chitala.
The Odinga family also invested in a molasses plant in Kisumu to produce ethanol from sugarcane by-products, an ambitious venture that later collapsed.
A firm believer that industry creates jobs, he often argued for temporary protection of local firms, including selective bans and higher tariffs to curb unfair competition.
On the 2022 campaign trail, as he argued for the revival of textiles and apparel, a remark about second-hand clothes (mitumba) was widely interpreted as calling them garments “worn by the dead,” drawing backlash from traders.
He later framed the point as a call to rebuild local manufacturing while organising the mitumba trade. Meanwhile, his stake in LPG cylinder manufacturing and validation grew through East African Spectre, which recently opened a larger branch near the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC).
Under Vision 2030’s political pillar, a new Constitution was central—a long-held rallying call for Mr Odinga and a plank in his 2007 manifesto. After the defeat of the 2005 draft and his disputed 2007 loss to then President Kibaki, that dream appeared out of reach.
But a post-election truce produced a reform deal, culminating in the 2010 Constitution that created 47 devolved government and delivered his vision of resources cascading to the grassroots.
Yet 12 years since devolution took effect in 2013, Mr Odinga felt it “was becoming another problem,” weighed down by transparency and accountability gaps, said Dr Scholastica Odhiambo of Maseno University. “He asked, what can we do better?” she added, noting he did not necessarily support reducing the number of counties.
At the heart of his push for devolution was inclusion. This zeal endeared him to marginalised communities but rattled those at the centre who criticised redistribution policies as anti-capital.
“His voice for economic inclusion has been loud… resources should not be only at the higher level,” said Dr Odhiambo, noting that the new Constitution included the Equalisation Fund to uplift vulnerable communities, especially in arid and semi-arid lands. “He was really loved in the marginalised [communities]. He was talking their mind.”
His aggressive push for social equity—including the Sh6,000 monthly stipend for vulnerable families in the 10-point People’s Programme under the 2022 Azimio manifesto—was dismissed by critics as populist and unaffordable, given fiscal constraints. Where would the money come from for free education from pre-primary to university, universal healthcare and expanded cash transfers for the elderly and persons with disabilities?
“I know where the money is because I have been in government for five years… I will seal all the loopholes and I will have enough money to give to Kenyans,” he said.
Beyond Kenya, Mr Odinga was a pan-Africanist who viewed the continent’s liberation as incomplete without economic integration and shared prosperity.
As AU High Representative for Infrastructure, he championed trans-continental rail, road and energy corridors to knit Africa together, arguing that “Africa cannot trade if it cannot connect.”
His vision drew from the ideals of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere—an Africa that speaks with one voice in global affairs.
A dream of a united Africa, which eluded independence leaders like Mr Nkrumah and Mr Nyerere, was also not achieved by the second crop of post-independence leaders like Mr Odinga. That is left to the next crop of leaders.
