Barack Obama’s Kenyan ‘granny’ Mama Sarah

Sarah Obama, the matriarch of former US president Barack Obama’s Kenyan family, has died aged at least 99 years.

Mama Sarah, as the stepgrandmother of the former US president was fondly called, was a philanthropist who promoted education for girls and orphans. She died while being treated at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral hospital in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city in the country’s west, according to her daughter Marsat Onyango.

“She died this morning. We are devastated,” Ms Onyango said.

She will be remembered for her work to promote education to empower orphans, said Kisumu governor Anyang Nyong’o, while offering his condolences to the people of the village of Kogelo for losing a matriarch.

“She was a philanthropist who mobilised funds to pay school fees for the orphans,” he said.

Sarah Obama was the second wife of president Obama’s grandfather and helped raise his father, Barack Obama Sr. The family is part of Kenya’s Luo ethnic group.

President Obama often showed affection towards her and referred to her as “granny” in his memoir, Dreams From My Father.

He described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father’s homeland and their initial awkwardness as they struggled to communicate.

She attended his first inauguration as president in 2009. Later, Mr Obama spoke about his grandmother again in his September 2014 speech to the UN General Assembly.

For decades, Sarah Obama has helped orphans, raising some in her home.

In a 2014 interview, she said that even as an adult, letters would arrive but she could not read them. She said she did not want her children to be illiterate, so she saw that all her family’s children went to school.

“I love education,” she said, because children “learn they can be self-sufficient”.

“If a woman gets an education she will not only educate her family but educate the entire village,” she added.

MATRIARCH: Sarah Obama was the step-grandmother of the former US president.