Ruto shares details of his last formal meeting with Raila
By Lutta Njomo, November 16, 2025President William Ruto has come to share details of his last formal meeting with the late former Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga before his untimely death while undergoing treatment in India on October 15, 2025.
During the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) founding members’ dinner on Saturday, November 15, 2025, the president shared details of his last formal meeting with the late former Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga. He revealed that their discussion focused on redefining the nation and striving to elevate it to first-world status.
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According to Ruto, Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyong’o and Raila’s former economic advisor, while serving as the country’s prime minister between 2008 and 2013, were present during the meeting.
“The last formal meeting I had with Baba, we had sat down to craft how to move Kenya from a third-world country to a first-world country. Baba is the one who had called Professor Hino from the US to come to Kenya,” Ruto detailed.
“We agreed that we must move the railway all the way, we agreed that we must have a new airport, we agreed that we must do another 10,000 kilometers of tarmac, so there are things that we have agreed that must move Kenya from being a third world country to a first world country,” he added.
“In honour of Baba and what he believed in he even disagreed with many people on the matter of the airport and many things because he could see the opportunity we were losing by not being ambitious with our plan and our programme.”
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Ruto first-world dream
He recently outlined an ambitious plan to transform Kenya from a developing nation into Africa’s “new Singapore,” listing energy expansion, irrigation, and infrastructure development as the country’s three top priorities.
Ruto stated Kenya must invest heavily in power generation, food security, and transport systems to achieve first-world status within a generation.
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“This is the moment, this is the generation, and this is the opportunity for us to move this country to the next level,” he said. “We cannot remain a third-world country forever. We must raise the bar.”
Ruto said the country’s current power capacity of 2,300 megawatts is insufficient to support growing industrial demand. He announced plans to generate an additional 10,000 megawatts within the next five to seven years, at a cost of about Ksh1 trillion.
