Devki Group starts work on Ksh50bn cement plant in Kitui
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Narendra Raval's Devki Group has begun building a Ksh50 billion (US$386 million) cement factory at Ngaaie in Mwingi North, Kitui County, with operations targeted for mid-2027.
Kenyan industrialist Narendra Raval's Devki Group has begun building a Ksh50 billion (US$386 million) cement factory at Ngaaie in Mwingi North, Kitui County, with the plant due to open in mid-2027.
The plant is going up in an area holding large limestone deposits and will be the first cement factory in the county. Raval, who chairs the group, said it should begin operating in the middle of next year.
He said hundreds of jobs would follow. Thousands of local residents are already working on construction or supplying the site, he said, and the plant will add direct and indirect employment once it runs, along with work for transporters, suppliers and traders around it. Raval framed the investment in generational terms, saying that putting young people into jobs is the only route and that those jobs will not appear without industrialisation.
He also expects the plant to help bring prices down by producing cement closer to the market it serves rather than trucking it across the country. Responding to concerns about market concentration, Raval said his answer to the monopoly argument was to create that position for Kenyans rather than hand it to somebody else.
Devki is committing money to the community around the site as well. The company has pledged to build modern classrooms and an administration block at a local school, connect it to a reliable water supply, and start a feeding programme it intends to extend to neighbouring schools.
Kitui has been trying to turn its mineral deposits into industry for years, and the factory is the largest private investment the county has attracted. Raval arrived in Kenya from India in 1981 at the age of 19, working in a hardware shop in Nairobi before starting his own business, and built Devki Group from a small steel operation into one of East Africa's largest industrial companies, spanning cement, steel, roofing sheets and aluminium through brands including National Cement, Simba Cement and Maisha Mabati, with operations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.