After leaving office, Barack Obama visited his grandmother’s village of Kogelo in western Kenya
Barack Obama’s step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, has died at a hospital in Kenya at the age of 99.
Affectionately called Granny Sarah by the former president, Mrs Obama defended her grandson during his 2008 presidential campaign, when he was said to be Muslim and not born in the US.
Her home became a tourist attraction when he was elected as the first black US president.
Sarah Obama was the third and youngest wife of Barack Obama’s grandfather.
She died early on Monday at a hospital in the western town of Kisumu, her daughter Marsat Onyango told Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.
A family spokesman said Mrs Obama had been unwell for a week, but did not have Covid-19.
Sarah Obama was born in 1922 in a village on Lake Victoria, according to AFP. She was a Muslim and part of Kenya’s Luo ethnic group.
For decades, she ran a foundation in Kenya to help educate orphans and girls, something she felt strongly about as she couldn’t read herself.
She was the third wife of Hussein Onyango Obama, President Obama’s paternal grandfather.
Her husband, who died in 1975, fought for the British in Burma, now called Myanmar, and is reported to be the first man in his village to swap goatskin clothing for trousers. (BBC)
