Court of Appeal orders Munga-linked Pioneer School to vacate Del Monte's 75-acre Thika land by December 31
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Pioneer International School has until December 31, 2026 to hand Del Monte Kenya vacant possession of a 75-acre parcel in Thika after the Court of Appeal upheld a finding that the school never held a tenancy over the land.
The Court of Appeal has ordered Pioneer International School, an institution associated with billionaire businessman Peter Munga, to vacate a 75-acre parcel of land owned by food processing firm Del Monte Kenya in Thika by December 31, 2026, ending a dispute that has run for more than a decade.
The appellate court upheld an earlier Environment and Land Court decision that the school had no legally enforceable tenancy, but allowed it to complete the current academic year and relocate students, including candidates sitting examinations. The judges said the temporary reprieve was intended to avoid disrupting children who played no role in the dispute, while stressing that the school had no legal right to remain on the property.
The dispute dates to September 3, 2013, when Del Monte leased the 75 acres to Goshen Gardens Limited for eight years to operate a school, at an initial monthly rent of Sh550,000 with annual increases of five percent. The lease prohibited assignment of the lease or any interest in it without the landlord's consent. Goshen fell into rent arrears in February 2015 and Del Monte issued a termination notice that May, triggering litigation and an arbitration that stalled after the parties entered settlement talks. In July 2015, Goshen offered to sell the school business, assets and equipment to Munga for a further Sh38 million.
Pioneer argued that Del Monte knew of the takeover, attended meetings and watched as the school rehabilitated facilities and recruited students and staff, creating an expectation that it would eventually be granted a lease. The judges rejected that argument. “What existed was, at most, an indefinite possibility of future negotiations contingent upon conditions that never materialised,” they ruled. “Optimism, however commercially understandable, is not tenancy.” They added that equity “does not convert a party's unilateral hope or exuberant optimism into a proprietary right.”
The court directed Pioneer to continue paying monthly occupation charges at the rate applicable immediately before the judgment, without those payments creating a tenancy, and barred it from subletting, assigning, altering or expanding the premises beyond ordinary school operations. Failure to surrender vacant possession by December 31 would allow Del Monte to enforce the eviction without obtaining another court order.
Del Monte moved to court in 2016 seeking the school's eviction, removal of fixtures and fittings and police enforcement, arguing that it had never agreed to lease the land to Pioneer and that Goshen had handed over the premises without consent. The Environment and Land Court ruled in the company's favour in July 2025, setting up the appeal now decided.