On this day, he was not the man who had served as MP, Cabinet minister and Prime Minister. He was not the man who had run for president five times.
He was just the East African Spectre director, who happened to love the factory more than the boardroom. Raila Odinga, who in 1971 sold his Opel to get capital to found East African Spectre, sat down with the firm’s general manager, Hudson Chitala, to discuss how to further improve operations.
Odinga chaired a meeting with guests and his senior managers and, as had become the norm, isolated Mr Chitala for a chat about the company. On Wednesday, Mr Chitala and the other more than 150 staffers strolled into work with rumours of their boss’ health hanging in the air. The senior managers opted to dash to the Odinga home in Karen, where the sad news was confirmed. By the time they returned to the office, staff were seemingly already aware and overburdened by the news.
‘We found the staff were unable to work, so we just told them to go home,’ Mr Chitala said on Thursday. In Raila’s office on the first floor of the building lies a pink candle, lit by the managers in honour of the man who often spoke of using manufacturing to resolve Kenya’s problems. Mr Chitala hopes that when staff return to the plant on Tuesday, two days after Mr Odinga’s burial, they will be emotionally and psychologically stable enough to resume operations. For now, the silence which is usually overpowered by the chugging and buzzing of heavy machinery and staff chatter, carries the day.
Raila is best known as a political animal, but he first cut his teeth in business, helping his family run a bus company in Nyanza. From early on, he built a clear moat between commerce and politics, a discipline that would later define his public life. Around the time he struck a truce with President William Ruto amid anti-tax protests, the Odinga family quietly opened a larger branch near the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC), underscoring the parallel track on which his businesses run.
He was among the first Kenyans to venture into gas-cylinder manufacturing, inspired by the extensive use of firewood and makaa in the country then. Together with his father, the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila founded East African Spectre. Ruth Okwiri, an accountant who has worked at East African Spectre for 36 years, said initially, the plant was based at the Kenya Industrial Estate and turned out about 30 cylinders a month.
The enterprise quickly hit a structural gap: Kenya had no local safety standards for pressure vessels. Early clients such as Shell and BP sent cylinders to London’s Atomic Energy establishment for testing because local certification did not exist. Only after those tests did the oil marketing companies allow full production.
Even inspection logistics were shaky; cylinders were sent to Lloyd’s for certification. Raila spotted an opportunity. He pushed to establish Kenyan standards and monitoring for cylinders and played a role in setting up the Kenya Bureau of Standards to oversee them. He later served as a senior manager at the standards body.
Raila never publicly declared a personal net worth, but he once suggested the Odinga family’s wealth was about Kshs2b (Shs53.2b), largely in company shares and real estate. The estate of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga owns 262,500 shares in East Africa Spectre. Raila owns 90,000 shares. His brother, Oburu Oginga owns 60,000 shares. Ida Odinga owns 50,000 shares. Israel Otieno Agina, the man who spent two years in detention for alleged sedition against former President Daniel Arap Moi, owns 30,000 shares.
The family of Argwings Kodhek, the first Black lawyer in East Africa, owns 5,000 shares. The family of former National Oil Corporation of Kenya director Ngesa Okolo holds 2,500 shares. Odinga, his wife Ida, and brother Oburu all have offices at the East African Spectre plant. Raila also set up Spectre International but it ceased operations in 2017, leaving behind a trail of debt to multiple creditors including staff who negotiated a Kshs44m (Shs1.1b) pay deal after suing in the same year.
Spectre International was incorporated in 1989, and six years later bid Kshs570m (Shs15.1b) for the assets of the Kenya Chemical and Food Corporation. In 2000, Mr Odinga and President Moi entered a political pact that saw the former appointed Energy minister a year later. Around the same time, KCB’s receiver manager reached an agreement to sell the 240-acre land hosting the molasses plant to Spectre International for Kshs3.6m. Be Energy, a petroleum dealer, has had better luck in business. In 2020 it controlled 2.4 percent of the market share. By 2022 the firm was controlling 3.1 percent of the oil market. In the 2024/2025 financial year, that control grew to 3.52 percent after selling 205,369 cubic metres of petroleum products.
Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority disclosures indicate that it is currently the fifth biggest oil marketer in Kenya only behind the big four multinationals – Vivo Energy (Shell), Rubis Energy, TotalEnergies and Ola Energy. Be Energy exports petrol, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel and oil lubricants to South Sudan, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Raila and his family own 2,801 shares in Be Energy Limited through Pan African Petroleum Company Ltd.
Pan African Petroleum Company is owned by Raila Odinga Junior (25,000 shares), Rosemary Adhiambo Odinga (50,000 shares), Winnie Irmgard Odinga (25,000 shares), Elija Bonyo Oburu (125,000 shares), Wenwa Akinyi Oranga (25,000 shares) and Kango Enterprises (250,000 shares). Kango Enterprises is wholly owned by Mr Odinga and his wife, Ida Betty Odinga. They each have 100 shares in Kango Enterprises.