ODM at 20: Key lessons for our political parties

ODM party leader Oburu Odinga attends former Prime Minsiter Raila Odinga's memorial service at Sony Sugar Green Stadium in Awendo Sub-County, Migori County on November 6, 2025.[Anne Atieno/Standard]

This week, the Orange Democratic Movement celebrates 20 years of existence. Media reports suggest that the party in Mombasa will be attended, by among other dignitaries, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, Prime CS Musalia Mudavadi and President William Ruto.

All three are founding members of ODM. The festivities will undoubtedly be politically and emotionally charged. There will be a lot of angling regarding the 2027 elections. And above all, everyone will feel the giant void left by the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Beyond the politics and sentimentalities, this milestone presents an important lesson for our party politics. As a country, we have a poor record of building functional inter-generational institutions. As such, we miss out on benefits of collective action.

These include the chance to crowd in talent for important causes, creating forums for coaching younger generations and holding older generations accountable, building the social infrastructure for a more humane politics and economics, and enabling cross-cutting linkages that attenuate negative impacts of political ethnicity on our social and political lives.

The lack of strong open-access institutions leaves us fairly atomised and therefore hostage to “natural” institutions like ethnicity. However, even in this instance we suffer consequences of poor institutions. Even when we are being tribal, we do not have strong institutions. Which means we miss out on a fair amount of intra-ethnic accountability and collective action. Ethnic groups are little more than special purpose vehicles for politicians to exploit during elections. Beyond that they provide little social benefit even to the tribalists and their supporters.

Notice that the argument here is not that ODM is a perfect organisation. Its biggest test will be whether it can survive the passing on of its founding party leader without fracturing into ethnic factions. Yet it is also hard to miss the fact that the party has generated some good simply by existing for 20 years. It has worked as a platform for cross-ethnic cooperation, both within its core regions of Nyanza, Western and Coast, but also across the country.

Importantly, the cross-ethnic cooperative nature of ODM grew out of necessity. At some point the party realised it is easier to crowd in cross-ethnic party membership than negotiate with other ethnic parties. Thus the party heavily invested in becoming the party in Western and Coast, well beyond its founding leaders’ Nyanza base.

This is the important lesson that our politicians should internalise. Ethnic politics is fairly costly. It corrodes the social fabric and turns us all into worse people. It limits the extent of our social, economic and political cooperation. There are lots of gains to be made from building strong cross-ethnic institutions.

All this to say ODM members should be proud of what they have built over the last 20 years. They should aspire for the party to last for more than a century. To that end they should invest in further institutionalisation and nationalisation of the party. We need all the strong institutions we can get.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University