• Umra Omar is one of a record number of female candidates in Kenya’s general election.
• She comes from Lamu, a traditional district near the Somali border noted for its intact Swahili culture.
• Kenya has the fewest elected female leaders in East Africa.

Kenya: Umra Omar takes a motorboat just before nightfall to go around the historic Lamu strait to meet with voters. As her boat speeds through gorgeous islands and comes on shore 30 minutes later, scores of women and children rush to embrace a candidate they believe will be their new governor.

Omar comes from Lamu, a traditional district near the Somali border noted for its intact Swahili culture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“If we’re to address the challenges we’re facing as women, young people, and indigenous communities, we have to take up the political battle as well,” she says CNN.

The 39-year-old is the coastal county’s first female contender for the top office. She is one of a record number of female candidates in Kenya’s general election on August 9.

Omar is a humanitarian who has previously been designated a CNN Hero for her work with the award-winning social company Safari Doctors, which offers basic healthcare in rural parts of Lamu.

She claims that running for government is a logical evolution after seven years of delivering “band-aid solutions” to bad healthcare.

“Being able to really dig our teeth into the root causes of rural challenges is what definitely propelled us into politics,” Omar explains.

But she has an uphill struggle.

Despite the fact that women make up over half of registered voters, Kenya has the fewest elected female leaders in East Africa.

In the 12 years after it was enacted, a legally required gender quota to break the male supermajority in authority has continually failed.

But this election might be different.

If the opposition leader Raila Odinga wins, Kenya would have its first female vice president in 64-year-old Martha Karua.

When Karua stood for president on her own in 2013, she received less than 1% of the vote, finishing sixth behind five males.

This is the closest any woman has got to the President of Kenya in the 25 years since she first campaigned for it.

When asked whether Kenya is ready for a female president like neighbouring Tanzania, Karua bristles.

“That question suggests that women ought not to be on the ballot, because I have never had anybody question whether Kenyans are ready for yet another male. So that question is in itself discriminatory,”  According to CNN, the former Kenyan justice minister.

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