NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 23 – Tatu City, Kenya’s first operational Special Economic Zone (SEZ), hosted the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry and County Governors for a briefing and tour of the 5,000-acre new city that has become a benchmark for mixed-use SEZs in Africa.
Located just 30 minutes from Central Nairobi, Tatu City has 77 businesses which are operational or under development, two schools – Crawford International and Nova Pioneer – which educate more than 3,000 students daily, thousands of apartments by Unity Homes, family residences in Kijani Ridge and the largest call centre in Kenya, with 5,000 new jobs.
President William Ruto recently announced plans to put aside KES 100 million to create industrial parks and county aggregations in each county to hasten the creation of public driven SEZs. Tatu City provided insights and experiences at the forum that would help the government achieve its goal of building agro- processing and value-added industries in the 47 counties to support regional economic growth and job opportunities.
“Tatu City is a good model of how County Governments can set up mixed-use industrial parks as Special
Economic Zones,” said Hon. Moses Kuria, HSC, Cabinet Secretary Ministry of Investments, Trade and
Industry.
“For County Governments to understand mixed-use industrial park aspects, we must start from Tatu City and Twiga Foods and envision how the industries and aggregation centres function. Kirinyaga County is in the process of having the Sagana Industrial City gazetted as an SEZ, which will be the first climate-smart agro-industrial city in the Central region,” said Her Excellency Ann Waiguru, the Governor of Kirinyaga County and the Chairperson of the Council of Governors.
“We are honoured to be the pacesetters and job creators in this space, and today’s session with esteemed members of government is an opportunity to share ideas on how Kenya can continue to leverage its location and business environment to become a leading destination for foreign direct investment,” said Preston Mendenhall, Country Head, Rendeavour, the owner and developer of Tatu City and six other city scale projects in Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
