Kenya - Economic Development

Financial Services

Jubilee Holdings Limited

Tourism Promotion Services (TPS) builds, rehabilitates and manages hotels, resorts, safari lodges and camps that contribute to economic growth in an environmentally and culturally sensitive manner. These investments are the result of close consultation with governments, with TPS often assisting them in the development of integrated tourism development plans for specific regions.

The first hotel ventures in Kenya were launched in the 1970s, when tourism was in a nascent stage. Today, TPS owns and operates a portfolio of premier properties under the Serena brand, including the Serena Beach Resort & Spa in Mombasa, the Nairobi Serena Hotel, and five Serena safari lodges and camps across Kenya.

TPS Eastern Africa is listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

AKFED set up Industrial Promotion Services (IPS) in 1963 to provide venture capital, technical assistance and management support to encourage and expand private enterprise in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Its core sectors include food and agro-industries, printing and packaging, textiles, pharmaceuticals, leather and infrastructure.

Food and Agro-Processing

In Kenya, IPS companies comprise several food and agro-processing industries that produce meat, fruit and vegetable products for local, regional and international markets. These companies include: Farmers Choice Ltd., Premier Foods Ltd. (PFL) and Frigoken. Frigoken provides agricultural extension services to tens of thousands of small-scale farmers to produce various agricultural goods including green beans. The beans and other vegetables are processed and exported to European markets. The company offers price guarantees, training, an assured market and high-quality inputs, along with year-round processing, giving farmers a steady income.

Meanwhile, Premier Foods Limited processes mango and yellow passion fruit to puree and juice for the domestic and export markets, including small-scale farmers in its value chain.

Extraction and Manufacturing

Other industrial IPS investments include:

• Allpack Industries Ltd., which manufactures high quality corrugated carton packaging and polypropylene bags for agricultural and consumer goods;


• Moztex S.A , which manufactures apparels for export; and


• Botanical Extracts EPZ, which produces a host of crude extracts, refined extracts and phytochemicals from botanical raw materials that are available within East Africa.

Infrastructure

In tandem with government policy, IPS has diversified into privately financed infrastructure projects such as thermal and hydropower plants, and telecommunications services.

Similarly, IPS has invested in SEACOM, which launched Africa’s first broadband subsea cable system along the eastern and southern coastlines in 2009, bringing with it a vast supply of high-quality and affordable Internet bandwidth. Connecting South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya to the Middle East and Europe, SEACOM’s cable system also connects inland countries such as Uganda and Rwanda.

Since then, SEACOM has moved beyond being a cable operator to become a major pan-African service provider, offering a full suite of resilient and scalable data services that allow Africa’s growing ICT community to develop and evolve. The SEACOM business division provides the African enterprise market with best-in-class connectivity and cloud services.

Preparing Youth for the Future

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) partners with youth-focused civil society organisations and social enterprises to enrol young people in both rural and urban areas into employable skills training programmes. This includes building links with private-sector employers for internship and employment opportunities.

It engages youth through human-centred design sessions to develop innovative business solutions. Promising youth-led solutions are scaled up with flexible innovation responsive grants.