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Born	Rita Auma Obama; 1960; Nairobi
Alma mater	University of Heidelberg; University of Bayreuth;
Relatives	Barack Obama

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Rita Auma Obama, known as Auma Obama, is a Kenyan author, journalist, Germanist and sociologist. She is the older (by one year) half-sister of outgoing president of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

Early years

Dr Rita Auma Obama, known as Auma Obama is a Kenyan author, journalist, Germanist and sociologist. She is the older (by one year) half-sister of outgoing president of the United States of America (USA), Barack Obama. She was born in 1960 in Nairobi, Kenya and is the daughter of Barack Obama Senior and his first wife, Kezia.(Chicago Sun-Times 23 March 2008) After attending a girls' boarding school in Nairobi where she became interested in the works of German authors such as Heinrich Beoll and Wolfgang Borchert, she travelled to Germany on a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship to study Sociology and German at the University of Heidelberg. After graduation she moved to the University of Bayreuth where she obtained a PhD degree with a dissertation was on the conception of labour in Germany and its literary reflections.(Der Spiegel, 24 July 2008).

Career

Awards

She received the 2014 10th Prix Courage Award presented yearly by the French luxury cosmetic company Clarins and the German TV programme “MonaLisa” to deserving women doing exceptional work with disadvantaged, sick or neglected children and young people. Die Welt 15 Oct 2014

As of December 2016 she is the founder and chief executive of the Sauti Kuu foundation, which she founded in nnnnnnnnnn which translated from Kiswahili means “strong voices”. The organization aims to promote development by helping young people in Africa to take advantage of educational, economic and cultural opportunities, therefore allowing them to create their own future.

Personal life

She did not actually meet her half-brother Barack until 1984 when they were in their mid-twenties. (Time magazine May 4 2012)

Her family live in the village of Nyang'oma Kogelo in Kenya Daily Mail 23 March 2015

Marriage

In 1996 she married Ian Manners from Berkshire in the UK (Barack Obama attended his stag party before the wedding) and a year later gave birth to a daughter whom they named Akinyi. The marriage was short-lived however and after the divorce she returned to Kenya and worked at the humanitarian organization CARE for many years.

Media

Dr Auma Obama has appeared on television and been interviewed in the press on many occasions since 2008. Three years later in 2011, a former university classmate the film director Branwen Okpako, made a documentary about Auma entitled “The Education of Auma Obama”. Amongst other things, the film explores the relationship with her father and her half-brother Barack Obama, as well as her education in Germany. The same year she appeared in the documentary "Building Hope" directed by the American co-founder of the charity the Nobelity Project Turk Pipkin.

She published her autobiography entitled "And Then Life Happens - A Memoir" in the autumn of 2010.

She has a twitter feed and facebook page