Corporate News
Businessman Peter Munga (right) with Greystone Industries Limited MD
Wairimu Kieme during the interview in his Nairobi office on Tuesday.
PHOTO | DIANA NGILA
By MUGAMBI MUTEGI and SIMON CIURI
In Summary
- Munga widens mix of investments to agro-processing, energy as he cuts back investments in financial sector.
- Unknown to many, he is also a committed educationist who owns and runs the Pioneer Group of Schools.
- The latest addition to his empire is Greystone Industries, a concrete poles business he started mid last year.
Billionaire businessman Peter Munga has been slowly
but steadily changing the composition of his investments — shedding the
image of a hard-core banking and insurance mogul to become an
industrialist with a mission to transform the rural economy.
Best known as the founder of Kenya’s biggest bank by customer base, Equity, Mr Munga has over the years become a serial entrepreneur with a foothold in different sectors of the economy.
“I am an entrepreneur at heart. Entrepreneurs
identify opportunities and go for them,” he said during an interview at
his foundation’s office next to Muthaiga Primary School in Nairobi.
His growing list of investment has lately stretched
as far as Eastern region where he bought the flagging Meru Ginneries
and revamped it into an operation that now serves 300,000 cotton farmers
in Meru, Embu, and Tharaka Nithi counties.
Mr Munga, who worked as a senior Ministry of
Agriculture official in the 1980s, last year distributed 200 tonnes of
cotton seeds to the farmers who in return offer his ginnery a steady
supply of raw material.
The billionaire’s plan is to start producing
sanitary towels and diapers at the factory, insisting that Kenya should
not continue importing any essential consumer good that can be produced
locally and cheaply.
Education sector
Unknown to many, Mr Munga is also a committed educationist who owns and runs the Pioneer Group of Schools.
The group includes the 15-year-old Pioneer High
School in Maragua, Murang’a, with a student population of 1,500. St.
Paul’s Thomas Academy, which is situated in the same locality, is also
in his stable.
His latest act in the education sector has been
Pioneer International University (PIU), a Nairobi-based institution of
higher learning that began as a college in 2005 but started offering
degree programmes last year after it received a letter
of interim authority from the regulator.
Asked about the performance of PIU in comparison to
other Kenyan universities, Mr Munga is quick to defend the institution
with a population of less than 500 students.
“You have to start somewhere. The problem with
people is that they expect you to start something today and it explodes
into success immediately,” he says, pointing out that Equity Bank’s
success did not come overnight.
“We do not believe in numbers, we provide quality
education. Institutions like Strathmore may not have the numbers like
other universities but their quality stands out. That is the model we
are emulating.”
Beth Munga, a daughter of Mr Munga, is the deputy
vice-chancellor of the institution, having taken over from her late
brother who died in an accident in 2013.
Mr Munga’s son, Alex Kieme, heads Equatorial Nut
Processors Limited, a company the billionaire established in 1994 to
process macadamia nuts, peanuts and cashew nuts.
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