Thomas Risley Odhiambo was a Kenyan entomologist and institution-builder who turned a visionary idea into enduring scientific infrastructure. Educated at Makerere and at Queens’ College, Cambridge, he returned to Nairobi and, in 1970, founded the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe). He argued—first in a widely noted Science review—that Africa needed a few centres of excellence to tackle vector-borne disease and crop loss, then set about creating one: recruiting top scientists, starting in modest barracks at the University of Nairobi’s Chiromo campus, and training a generation of African researchers. Under his leadership, icipe grew into a world-class hub whose “4Hs” lens—human, animal, plant, and environmental health—advanced work on tsetse and mosquito vectors, cereal and horticultural pests, and beneficial insects such as bees and silkworms. Beyond insect science, Odhiambo architected pan-African knowledge institutions. He founded the African Academy of Sciences and served as its first president, helped launch the Kenya National Academy of Sciences, and was among the founding figures linked to TWAS. His leadership was recognized globally: he shared the 1987 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger with Senegal’s President Abdou Diouf and was elected to bodies such as the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The throughline of his career—building African-led institutions able to solve African problems—left a durable legacy in policy, research capacity, and scientific self-reliance across the continent.