Lamu palm oil plan: Sh12.9 billion project pitched for 3,000 jobs at Witu Nyangoro
Key points
- Officials pitch a Sh12.9 billion ($100 million) palm oil grow-and-process project at Witu Nyangoro Ranch in Lamu.
- Government estimate: about 3,000 jobs if the scheme proceeds; talks are “nearing completion,” PS Abubakar Hassan said.
- Kenya spends about $1 billion a year on crude palm oil imports — the second-largest import bill after petroleum, the PS said.
- No public figures yet on tonnes, wages, local ownership or how much of the import bill the ranch could replace.
Sh12.9 billion on a ranch slide, 3,000 jobs on a press line — and still no mill, no tonne target, no signed offtake. Investment Promotion Principal Secretary Abubakar Hassan said negotiations on a palm oil grow-and-process project at Witu Nyangoro Ranch in Lamu are nearing completion, Eastleigh Voice reported.
The pitch is local planting plus processing, with spillover work in farming, transport and services. Hassan put Kenya’s crude palm oil import bill at about $1 billion a year, second only to petroleum. The fat goes into cooking oil, processed foods, soaps, detergents and cosmetics, so households and factories both feel dollar and freight swings. Lamu Governor Timamy has welcomed the idea. The same county is already on the map for a proposed Dangote refinery and for the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport corridor. None of that, the report stresses, includes a published production volume or a share of the $1 billion import hole this ranch would close. Recruitment rules, pay bands and local equity are also unpublished. The investment remains under negotiation.
A ranch brochure is not a mill
Job numbers without a capacity table are a campaign poster. Coastal land, water and wildlife claims will arrive the moment a fence goes up — better they are in the ESIA now than in a riot later.
Agriculture desk: Agriculture. Verified shilling and dollar figures, ranch name and Hassan quotes from Eastleigh Voice.
The Investment Authority should publish the draft term sheet’s production band and water demand. County assembly should demand a public land-use briefing before any lease is sealed.
Residents should treat the 3,000-job figure as a ceiling in a feasibility note, not a hiring date, until wages and local quotas are written down.
Readers should cross-check any deadline, fee, court date or programme claim against primary gazettes, agency circulars and court records before acting on this report.
Official gazettes, court rulings and agency circulars may update these facts after publication; readers should verify any deadline, fee or court date against primary sources before acting.
Based on Eastleigh Voice reporting of the PS briefing. The project is still under negotiation and may change or stall.
