Ngina Kenyatta is the matriarch in charge of the vast business empire of the Kenyatta family. She runs a business empire that includes well-known commercial brands and blue-chip corporations.
The business empire grew to include shares in Kenya’s Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), Brookside Dairy, Kenya’s largest dairy company, and Heritage Hotels East Africa, a chic hotel chain. Media Max Company, which owns K24 TV, Kameme Radio, and The People newspaper, is also part of the business empire.
The empire also includes thousands of acres of prime land in Kenya that her late husband, Kenya’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, acquired in the 1960s and 1970s. The family allegedly purchased the lands through a settlement transfer fund scheme, which allowed government officials to purchase land from the British colonial administration at a low cost.
According to Forbes, the 89-year-old owns 500,000 acres of Kenyan land worth an average of $1,000 per acre. The BBC reports that there is no reliable estimate of the Kenyatta family’s net worth. However, in a 2013 issue of Nigeria’s Ventures magazine, her net worth was estimated to be $1 billion. In 2012, Forbes named her one of the ten African millionaires to watch.
Mama Ngina was born into an affluent Kenyan family in 1933. Muhoho wa Gathecha, her father, was a colonial chief. When she was only 18 years old, she married Jomo Kenyatta, a commoner. Her husband was arrested in response to the Mau Mau insurgency just one year into their marriage, leaving her alone to raise their first child, Kristina Wambui. She reconnected with her husband after he served his seven-year sentence.
The leaked Pandora Papers in 2021 revealed Mama Ngina’s tight grip on her family’s financial affairs. According to the press, she is a major beneficiary of vast offshore accounts.
“The Kenyattas’ offshore investments, including a company with $30 million in stocks and bonds, were discovered among hundreds of thousands of pages of administrative paperwork from the archives of 14 law firms and service providers in Panama, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), and other tax havens,” the BBC reported, citing the Pandora Papers.
She was named the first recipient of the Varies Foundation, which was established in Panama in 2003. According to the newspaper, Mama Ngina has an offshore company called Milrun International Limited, which was founded in the British Virgin Islands. She was able to purchase an apartment in central London through the activities of the company, which was previously rented by British Labour MP Emma Ann Hardy. The property is now estimated to be worth around $1.3 million.