A quiet but consequential battle is playing out across East Africa’s construction sector, and it has nothing to do with politics.
Three deep-pocketed tycoons — Narendra Raval, Sarbjit Singh Rai, and Edha Nahdi — are locked in an escalating fight for control of the region’s cement industry, and between them they have already committed at least Sh133 billion to acquisitions and new clinker plants over the past three years alone.
The scale of the expansion is striking. This is not a contest confined to one market — it stretches across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, with each man racing to lock down raw material supply, production capacity and market share before the other two get there first.
Key Men
Sarbjit Singh Rai, through his Sarrai Group, is the latest to raise the stakes. Already the operator of Kisumu-based Rai Cement — which dominates the western Kenya market — and with existing cement operations in Uganda and Rwanda, Rai is now seeking to establish a new plant in Nyeri, pushing his footprint deeper into Kenya’s central region.
Edha Nahdi’s Amsons Group has been arguably the most aggressive mover. Nahdi unveiled a Sh38.8 billion clinker plant for Bamburi Cement and has committed Sh51.6 billion to the Kenyan cement maker over three years — a scale of investment that signals long-term intent, not opportunistic buying.
Amsons has also grown its footprint through acquisition, buying out the Kenyan government’s stake in East African Portland Cement (EAPC) for Sh1.6 billion and separately picking up a 65 percent stake in Tanzania’s Mbeya Cement, extending the group’s reach beyond Kenya’s borders.
Narendra Raval’s Devki Group, meanwhile, has unveiled a Sh45 billion clinker plant in West Pokot, tapping into raw material-rich northern Kenya. Raval has also gone shopping abroad: his National Cement Company completed a 99.94 percent buyout of Rwanda’s Cimerwa Plc for Sh13.6 billion, giving Devki a controlling foothold in the Rwandan market.
Why Now?
Two forces are converging to make this land grab possible — and profitable. The first is a retreat by foreign capital. Holcim, the Swiss multinational that once held major stakes in both Bamburi and EAPC, has been exiting its African positions, opening the door for well-capitalised local players to step in and take over.
The second is government policy: a wave of divestment from what Kenya and other regional governments now classify as “non-strategic” sectors has accelerated the transfer of ownership from state hands and foreign multinationals into the portfolios of a handful of African tycoons.
The result is an industry that is rapidly consolidating. Where cement production across the region was once split among multinationals, state entities and a wider field of local players, control is now concentrating in the hands of three billionaires with the capital and appetite to keep buying.
Broad view
There’s also a defensive logic at play. Local industrialists are positioning themselves to box out China’s Huaxin Cement, which has been aggressively expanding across sub-Saharan Africa through major acquisitions in Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Malawi.
By moving fast and buying up plants, stakes and clinker capacity now, Raval, Rai and Nahdi are ensuring East Africa’s cement industry stays in African — and specifically their — hands.
Underpinning all of it is a straightforward economic bet: East Africa’s housing and infrastructure deficit means demand for cement is only going to keep rising.
Kenya’s imposition of heavy tariffs on clinker raw materials has further shaped strategy, pushing tycoons to invest in their own clinker production rather than rely on imports — a shift that explains why so much of this Sh133 billion has gone specifically into new clinker plants rather than simply buying finished-product capacity.
What emerges is a sector being reshaped in real time — not by government industrial policy, but by three men making a calculated bet that in East Africa, cement is the new oil, and whoever controls production controls the boom.
