Obama Snr sent bar bills to Oginga and Tom Mboya

Barack Obama with his father, Barack Obama Sr. in an undated family photo from the 1970s. Photo: Courtesy.

He was a product of the ‘African Airlifts’ that saw many Kenyans land in American universities. While we were colonised by the British, Kenyans looked to the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ for higher education through the airlifts of the 1950s. It was these ‘airlift graduates’ who helped spur growth on returning home. Mineral rich DR Congo went to the dogs because it had less than 10 university graduates as human capital to manage its vast mineral wealth and natural resources.

Kenya skirted the route taken by Congo with airlift graduates like Barack Obama Snr, whose immortality rests on the outcome of one of his five failed marriages, which produced the first African American president, Barack Obama. Obama could have ended up being called Baraka Obama, had his dad not changed his name to Barack! Unfortunately, Obama Snr never lived to see the son he abandoned become the world’s most powerful man.