Investors put Sh800m in private cemetery

Langata Cemetery in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By JAMES KARIUKI

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Summary

• Gates of Pearl, located next to Kinale Forest, Nyandarua, will provide 35,000 ‘‘resting places’’ for wealthy Kenyans at a premium price.
• The facility, which has numerous rivers passing through it, will have a chapel, a petrol station and a cafeteria.

Investors including private equity firms will put Sh800 million in a 69-acre private cemetery targeting the fabulously rich.

Gates of Pearl, located next to Kinale Forest, Nyandarua, will provide 35,000 ‘‘resting places’’ for wealthy Kenyans at a premium price.

Officials expect to charge upwards of Sh130,000 per unit with a single grave having a lease of 50 years. The project, the Business Daily learnt, will start in two months.

Speaking earlier during a property TV show, one of the investors, Fusion Capital chief executive Daniel Kamau, confirmed that a special purpose vehicle Peponi Investments — where they are a minority investor — will implement the project whose majority stake holder is Alliance Capital Partners.

Mr Kamau said Kenyans were in dire need of cemeteries and this provided them with a niche market that investors were keen to cash in on.

“We saw it as an opportunity and will break ground later this year to meet this need by giving our loved ones a decent burial,” he said.

Two Canadian landscape architectural firms, Erik Lees & Associates established two decades ago, and Birmingham & Wood Architects which has been in the business since the 1930s, have been hired to implement the project.

The facility, which has numerous rivers passing through it, will have a chapel, a petrol station and a cafeteria.

“The memorial park will provide premium interment lots and memorialisation sites for families seeking to memorialise their loved ones in a secure and serene setting,” said Alliance Capital on its website.

The project’s proponents have since received a nod from the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) and will be breaking ground this year.

The business is not purely unprecedented. The Nakuru North Cemetery, which has since been declared full and closed, had available slots earlier bought by the town’s wealthy who usually offer them for sale at between Sh200,000 to Sh350,000 with the county government receiving an upfront fee of Sh100,000.

In Nairobi Lang’ata Cemetery, a permanent grave, costs Sh37,000 for an adult and Sh22,500 for children.

Currently, Kenya has no private cemetery facility where remains of local celebrities and the wealthy can be interred.