Grace Onyango

Grace Monica Akech Onyango was born on 26 June 1924 in Sakwa, in the lakeside region of Nyanza, the second of nine children. People called her Nya'Bungu — 'Daughter of the Bush.' She studied at Ng'iya Girls School and trained as a teacher at Vihiga Teachers Training College, graduating in 1955. Before any election, she was a schoolteacher and a trainer of teachers, shaping girls in a part of Kenya where few women were expected to lead anything at all.

In 1965 she became the first woman mayor in independent Kenya, leading the city of Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria. Two other women had entered the race but withdrew under what they described as hostile abuse from male rivals, leaving Grace the only woman against six men — and she won. She held the office for four terms, the most the city allowed. As mayor she Africanised Kisumu's colonial street names and made a quietly radical rule: if a male council worker died, his widow or a kinswoman could take his job, so the family would not go hungry.

In 1969 she went further still, winning the Kisumu Town seat to become the first elected woman Member of Parliament in post-independence Kenya. Her opponents were all men, with far more money; her supporters answered with the chant that they would take a rival's money but vote for 'Mama.' She served three successive parliaments until 1983 and became the first woman to sit in the Deputy Speaker's chair. Beyond the chamber she led the Luo Union and the Child Welfare Society and helped found the National Fund for the Disabled of Kenya in 1980. When she died in Kisumu on 8 March 2023, aged 98, Kenya mourned the woman who had opened the door for every elected woman who followed.