A petitioner has urged the National Assembly to compel the government to honour a Sh24 billion contract breach award by the High Court to Kwale International Sugar Company Limited.
The historic award of December 2025 stemmed from a fundamental breach of a 2007 land deal, with the court finding that the National Treasury and the Attorney-General failed to grant the sugar company possession of its 15,000-acre leased land.
In a plea filed in the National Assembly, Mr Kennedy Ochieng’, executive director of Kenya Legal Resource Centre, notes that the delay or refusal to comply with the court judgment issued in Mombasa undermines the law.
This came even as he urged the House to institute an independent inquiry into the conduct of public officials whose actions or omissions resulted in the government’s liability.
“The High Court found that the government breached its statutory and contractual obligations to Kwale International Sugar Company Limited, causing the collapse of a major agricultural investment in Kwale County,” said Mr Ochieng’.
Lack of state protection crippled the sugar firm’s $300 million investment that included $140 million in syndicated loans and $160 million in equity, forcing a shutdown and leaving the complex in operational limbo for years.
The sugar company is an ultra-modern agro-industrial enterprise located in Msambweni Sub-county, Kwale County, and is built on the grounds of the old, collapsed Ramisi Sugar Factory.
The Kwale International Sugar Company Limited plant in Ramisi, Kwale County.
The company features a modern processing mill capable of crushing 3,300 tonnes of sugarcane per day and manages a 5,000-hectare nucleus estate alongside over 1,200 registered out-grower farmers.
The miller also houses an integrated 18-megawatt bagasse-fired power plant to co-generate renewable power while using an advanced sub-surface drip irrigation system that reduces crop water requirements by 40 per cent.
Mr Ochieng warned that continued delayed payment may increase the financial burden on Kenyan taxpayers through accrued interest and legal costs, and discourage local and foreign investment. The petitioner requested that the National Assembly help in the passing of policies to ensure that similar contractual breaches do not recur, as well as an intervention to have a report outlining the financial implications of the judgment and measures to protect public resources.
But due to the limited access to the land, irrigation and power infrastructure was incomplete, the cane crushing equipment was underutilised, production reduced, costs increased and revenues depressed.
This, the petition says, led to a loss of $277.7 million comprising additional project costs, operational losses, interest, hedging restructuring, penalties and associated financing costs.
The petition notes that the sugar company filed a suit on April 1, 2022, seeking judgment against the Cabinet secretary for National Treasury for a declaration that the government breached the statutory and contractual duties owed to the sugar company.
That the miller, in 2006, through its promoters, sought to purchase 42,000 acres of land from Bank of India.
“Before the sale could proceed, the government intervened and acquired the land and allocated 27,000 acres of the land for the resettlement of squatters,” the petition says.
It reveals that the remaining 15,000 acres were leased to the sugar company in a sublease dated August 20, 2007, for 99 years from June 1, 2007, for sugarcane farming and related activities.
According to the petition, access to the 15,000 acres by the sugar company “was further hindered by an injunction issued by a court in Mombasa.”
The orders, the petition says, remained in force until March 13, 2018, when the sugar company successfully challenged the injunctions, and the petition was set aside before it was dismissed in a judgment delivered on January 13, 2022.
The petition further says that in addition to the occupation of the land by squatters, the CS, in breach of their statutory duty, caused 1,000 hectares “of the said land to be hived off and given to Base Titanium Limited without due process or compensation to the sugar company.”
