John Kibunga Kimani bought one third of the company where he worked as a boy.

Kakuzi's register records a rise from 1.78% in 2001 to 33.53% in 2025. The agriculturalist turned decades of buying into board influence and a community foundation. A dispute over 3,200 acres now tests the obligations he attached to ownership.

John Kibunga Kimani owned 349,188 shares in Kakuzi at the end of 2001. They represented 1.78% of the company and placed him sixth on its shareholder register. At the end of 2025, his name stood against 6,570,947 shares, or 33.53%, the largest holding registered directly to any individual or company. Another 496,498 shares, equivalent to 2.53%, belonged to the Kakuzi Neighbourhoods Development Foundation, the community vehicle he helped create.

Camellia Plc remained in control through Bordure Limited and Lintak Investments Limited, which together held 50.70%. Kimani had not taken over Kakuzi. He had, however, spent almost a quarter of a century moving from the lower reaches of its register to the first line.

The number of shares in issue barely moved. Kakuzi had 19,599,999 shares in 2001 and the same number in 2025. Kimani's ascent did not come from a shrinking share count. He kept buying. By 82, he had become Kakuzi's largest directly registered shareholder, a non-executive Director, and the author of one of the longest individual accumulation campaigns on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

He says he was born at Kakuzi, as were his parents, and worked on its coffee and sisal plantations as a boy. A 1984 directory published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature records his date of birth as 14 July 1944 and describes a Kenyan agriculturalist specializing in agricultural economics, management, environmental planning and land and water resources. Four decades later, Kakuzi lists the former plantation worker among the directors responsible for overseeing the company.

The farm before the fortune

Kimani graduated from Makerere University with a degree in agriculture, obtained a master's degree in agricultural economics from the University of Reading and later earned a doctorate in development studies, economics and socio-anthropology from the University of Sussex. Kakuzi also lists him as a former fellow of the World Bank's Economic Development Institute and a member of the Agricultural Society of Kenya and the Avocado Exporters Association of Kenya.

His professional life began inside the institutions that managed Kenya's farms, irrigation schemes and river basins. In a 2018 account, Kimani said he worked from 1968 to 1985 in the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Irrigation Board and the Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority. His assignments covered smallholder training, irrigation development and long-range planning for land and water resources. The IUCN directory places him at the National Irrigation Board from 1969 to 1976 before he joined the Tana River Development Authority as an agriculturalist and team leader for the Athi Basin Planning Team.

He later moved into agricultural and rural-development consultancy, working in Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and South Sudan. His clients included programs backed by JICA, DANIDA, GIZ, the European Union, SNV and the World Bank.

Kakuzi also became a client. Kimani says that after Camellia acquired control in the 1990s, he joined the Kenyan consultants working with a British firm on a strategic development plan for the company. He later prepared papers on devolution and corporate social responsibility, advised Kakuzi to move its timber sales yard closer to the highway and proposed M-Pesa payments in place of cash for local sales.

Agriculture had given him a profession before Kakuzi became his largest visible investment. He knew the land as a boy, irrigation as a public officer, agricultural development as a consultant, and the company as an adviser.

Buying through weakness.

Kimani told Business Daily that he began buying listed shares in the late 1970s. By 2001, he was already Kakuzi's sixth-largest shareholder. Sasini Tea and Coffee's 2002 annual report placed him sixth with 513,788 shares, or 1.35% . Housing Finance's 2004 report placed him eighth with 609,019 shares, or 0.53%.

His name appeared across the market. Centum's 2008/09 annual report recorded 2.37 million shares. At Total Kenya, he had become the third-largest named shareholder by 2013. Reporting from the same period identified substantial positions in Nation Media Group, Safaricom, Kenya Re and East African Breweries. A 2013 snapshot valued 2.7 million EABL shares at Sh894 million and roughly 2.1 million NMG shares at Sh636.6 million.

The holdings were not static trophies. Kimani stayed on shareholder registers as agricultural counters moved through difficult seasons, NMG lost value and Centum traded below the stated value of its underlying assets. He accumulated when prices weakened, concentrated when one company mattered more and sold when capital had another use.

Kakuzi received the capital released from another large holding. Total Kenya's 2015 report recorded 3,013,701 shares in Kimani's name. He began selling in 2017 and had exited by December 2018, releasing about Sh80 million. He said the money went into more Kakuzi shares. By July 2019, regulatory filings showed a further purchase of 263,526 Kakuzi shares then worth about Sh101 million.

Kakuzi becomes personal.

Kimani's Kakuzi holding stayed near 2% between 2001 and 2005. The faster accumulation began in 2006. By December 2014, he owned 24.989%. Crossing 25% would ordinarily have triggered takeover requirements, so he applied to the Capital Markets Authority for an exemption from the obligation to make an offer for the remaining shares. The regulator granted the request on 24 December 2014.

In early 2015, Kimani said he wanted 29% and did not intend to take control. His stake reached 26.1% by May and 28.88% at the end of 2016. He was aiming for 29.9%. By April 2018, he had reached 30.3%. Later that year, at 31.19%, he indicated that he could eventually go as high as 39.9%. The official register recorded 33.53% at the end of 2025, below an interim position of 34.54% reported in 2022.

At 25%, Kimani said he represented generations associated with communities around Kakuzi and wanted his ownership to protect workers from mistreatment. He raised access roads, movement through the estate and relations with neighbouring communities. The holding, he said, was not solely an investment.

He attached assets to that promise in 2018 by establishing the Kakuzi Neighbourhoods Development Foundation. Kimani said he would transfer 300,000 Kakuzi shares, then worth about Sh93 million, over five years. Dividends would support sanitation and education, including secondary-school places and progression to university.

The foundation held 13,700 shares when the plan was announced. Its position reached 216,598 shares at the end of 2021 and 466,598 a year later. Kakuzi's 2025 register recorded 496,498 shares, or 2.53%, making the foundation the fourth-largest directly registered shareholder.

A board seat after two years.

Kimani formally asked Kakuzi for a board seat in 2017 as his ownership approached 30%. The company told him there was no vacancy. Minority shareholders repeated the demand at the May 2018 annual general meeting. Then-chairman Graham Mclean said the eight-member board was at full capacity.

Kimani used the AGM to set out the argument he wanted to carry into the boardroom. He discussed biotechnology, food security and the company's economic role across neighbouring counties. He said an enterprise whose principal asset was land could not operate as an isolated enclave from the people and economy around it. He also said he did not consider himself at war with Camellia, the controlling shareholder.

Kakuzi appointed him as a non-executive director on 1 November 2020. The same announcement named Nicholas Ng'ang'a as chairman and established an Independent Human Rights Advisory Committee and an operational grievance mechanism.

The governance changes came as serious allegations against Kakuzi's security personnel placed the company under international scrutiny. Eighty-five claims had been brought in London against Camellia and two subsidiaries over alleged assaults and sexual violence against local residents. Kakuzi had been named initially but was dropped from the proceedings in July 2020. Camellia announced a settlement in February 2021 without an admission of liability by the companies or by Kakuzi. Payments to claimants, legal costs and community measures were expected to cost up to £4.6 million over three years.

The measures included independent monitoring, community social centres, predominantly female safety marshals, new public-access roads, a working group on land previously donated by Kakuzi, a human-rights-defenders policy and an independent human-rights impact assessment. Kakuzi has since published policies, monitoring reports and details of its grievance system.

Kimani had raised worker treatment and access in 2015, asked for board influence before the allegations produced the 2020 crisis and created the foundation in 2018. Appointment converted his public arguments into a director's duties. He was now jointly responsible for the company whose behaviour he had wanted ownership to change.

The land question

Land now places Kimani's language of obligation against Kakuzi's defence of its property. In November 2025, the National Land Commission recommended that Kakuzi surrender 3,200 acres of appropriate land to settle the most vulnerable members of groups pursuing historical land claims. It also directed state agencies to vet and profile the intended beneficiaries. Kakuzi said it would use legal means to protect shareholders' rights and challenged the recommendation.

On 27 April 2026, the Environment and Land Court declined to grant Kakuzi leave to begin judicial review proceedings against the commission's decision. The company filed an appeal. On 6 July, the same court rejected its request to preserve the existing position while the appeal proceeded. The court said that once leave had been refused, there was no substantive case before it on which to attach a stay.

Kakuzi has warned that surrendering the land would affect operations, employment and shareholder value. The claimants seek a remedy for alleged historical dispossession. The dispute therefore carries several interests at once, including asserted rights to land, the commission's statutory process, the livelihoods tied to the estate and the property of more than 1,600 shareholders. The appeal leaves those questions unresolved.

Kimani is not accused of wrongdoing in the dispute. His position still carries unusual weight. He owns one-third of the company, sits on its board, and created a foundation for its neighbours after saying that the estate could not isolate itself from them. The dispute asks how far those commitments travel when land, rather than dividends, is at stake.

Capital moves again.

The rest of Kimani's portfolio has continued to change while Kakuzi remained at its centre. Nation Media Group's annual reports show a rise from 2.96 million shares at the end of 2015 to 7.81 million at the end of 2022. The holding then fell to 3.51 million in 2023 and 978,540 in 2024.

At Safaricom, he added 8.64 million shares in the second half of 2023 and ended the year with 27.7 million. A later filing put the position at 31.3 million shares at the end of 2024. By July 2026, the reported holding had contracted to 24.1 million shares, then worth about Sh850 million.

Centum moved in the opposite direction. Kimani owned 2.37 million shares, or 0.43%, in March 2009 and about 8.2 million shares in March 2021. By August 2022, he was near 31.2 million. The position rose to 45.5 million in December 2023, 64.53 million in December 2024 and 69.4 million at the end of March 2025.

Centum's latest annual report records another 7.19 million shares acquired during the year to March 2026. The purchase lifted Kimani to 76.59 million shares and 11.51% of the investment company. Business Daily reported that Centum traded between Sh11.23 and Sh11.86 during the period in which the additional shares were bought. At Sh18.60 on 15 September 2026, the full holding was worth about Sh1.42 billion.

The transactions across Total, NMG, Safaricom and Centum show more than endurance. Kimani releases capital and directs it toward a larger priority. Kakuzi absorbed the Total proceeds. Centum has become the latest large accumulation.

A second land dispute.

Kimani's private interests have also placed land before the courts. On 2 July 2013, Rural Development Services Limited agreed to sell African Cotton Industries a 51.28-hectare property at Makuyu for Sh205.36 million. Court records identify Kimani and Lilian Wanjiku Kimani as directors of the seller. African Cotton paid a deposit of Sh20.536 million. The transaction later collapsed and Rural Development Services attempted to return the money.

The Environment and Land Court ordered specific performance in 2021, requiring the seller to complete the transfer. On 25 March 2026, the Court of Appeal set that judgment aside. It considered the early attempt to refund the deposit, the notice of cancellation, the time that had passed and the buyer's lack of possession or development. The judges concluded that compelling completion in those circumstances would be inequitable.

The litigation exposed a part of Kimani's wealth that shareholder registers cannot price. It also placed a family-owned property in Makuyu, the same area as Kakuzi, inside a dispute that lasted almost thirteen years.

What the register can see.

A market snapshot on 8 July 2026 valued Kimani's Kakuzi shares at Sh2.86 billion, his reported Safaricom position at Sh850 million and his then 73.6 million Centum shares at Sh1.09 billion. Those three quoted investments amounted to roughly Sh4.8 billion at the prices used that day. Centum's later disclosure of 76.59 million shares and a higher market price valued that holding alone at about Sh1.42 billion on 15 September.

The numbers are snapshots rather than a net-worth statement. Share prices move. The NMG position adds another listed asset. His private land and business interests are not fully disclosed. Historical reporting has linked him to transport, construction and logistics without identifying enough of the underlying companies or liabilities to produce a defensible total.

Kimani holds billions of shillings in listed shares through a method built from concentration, patience and reallocation. His Kakuzi purchases also crossed the point at which investment becomes governance. A large purchase produced a regulatory filing. The takeover threshold brought in the regulator. The board campaign reached the AGM. The company's land and conduct placed ownership inside courtrooms and community negotiations.

In 2001, 349,188 Kakuzi shares placed Kimani sixth. At the end of 2025, 6,570,947 placed him first among direct holders. The number of shares in issue had not changed. His relationship with the company had.

Kakuzi gave him early work, agriculture gave him a profession and the company later used his advice. Its shares then gave him influence, a foundation and a seat on the board. The dispute over 3,200 acres cannot be resolved by buying another block of shares. It now belongs to the Court of Appeal, the National Land Commission, Kakuzi's board and the communities around the estate. Kimani spent 24 years turning ownership into influence. The unanswered question is how he will use it.