Sarah Obama, grandmother to former U.S President Barack Obama has died in Kenya.
She was aged 99 years.
News of her death was announced by her daughter Marsat Onyango on Monday.
“It is true she has gone to be with the Lord, she passed on this morning,” Marsat said.
Sarah Obama, popularly known as Mama Sarah, had been admitted to the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu.
Family spokesman Sheikh Musa Ismail said she had been unwell for a week, but had tested negative for Covid-19.
Ismail said the former president had “sent his condolences.”
Born in 1922 in a village on the shores of Lake Victoria, Sarah was the third wife of Hussein Onyango Obama, President Obama’s grandfather, a herbalist and a village elder who fought for the British in Burma, now called Myanmar.
Obama is linked to his Kenyan family via his father Barack senior, a pipe-smoking economist who Obama has admitted he “never truly” knew.
Kenyatta said Monday the country had “lost a strong, virtuous woman. A matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values.”
He said she would be remembered for her philanthropic work, saying she had initiated several community development projects in her village.
Sarah Obama was for a long time best known for the hot porridge and doughnuts she served at a local school.
