Indian tycoon Gautam Adani.
Apeiro Limited, the largest shareholder in the Safaricom consortium that has been awarded the contract for the technology-based system for the Universal Health Coverage (UHC), has business links to the Adani Group.
The government has awarded the consortium a contract to provide an Integrated Healthcare Technology System (IHTS) for the UHC programme. Each of the three firms will contribute to the Sh104.8 billion needed to implement, maintain and support the IHTS system over the next ten years based on their shareholding.
The Abu Dhabi firm owns 59.55 percent of the stake in the consortium, Safaricom has a 22.56 per cent stake, while Konvergenz Network Solutions Limited has a shareholding of 17.89 per cent.
The firms will recoup their investment through monthly instalments that will be paid starting February next year, upon hitting the set performance milestones.
Apeiro is a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, Sirius International Holding.
Sirius itself is a subsidiary of International Holding Limited (IHL), creating a web of companies that make it hard to track the beneficial owners.
Sirius is currently in a joint venture with Adani in which they run a company known as Sirius Digitech Limited.
In July this year, this joint venture announced the acquisition of Coredge.io Private Limited which they called a “cutting edge sovereign AI and cloud platform company”.
The Adani Group has recently gained notoriety in Kenya after it emerged that the Indian conglomerate is in negotiations to operate the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for a period of 30 years.
The group is also in negotiations for a multibillion dollar long-term lease contract in Kenya’s energy sector.
The business partnerships have for the first time created a link between Adani and the President William Ruto-championed UHC.
Far less known, however, is the third member of the consortium, Konvergenz Network Solutions. Its website claims to operate in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, with its address listed as 4th Avenue Towers in Upperhill.
“It is noteworthy that the Safaricom Consortium will invest the full project cost and recover their investment over 10 years by payment of monthly instalments (the instalment payments will commence from February 2025) based on the successful implementation of the project,” said Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai in a press statement on Friday.
The Safaricom consortium is said to have been picked to implement the big-money project through a Specially Permitted Procurement Procedure under the Public Procurement and Assets Disposal Act.
The Adani link in the UHC project comes at a time the company is trying to put out fires that have been lit under its feet by civil society groups that are opposed to its $2 billion (Sh258 billion) takeover of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
Last week, Adani argued in court that its JKIA takeover on a 30-year concession would be of “tremendous benefit to the Kenyan public”.
“If the contract is signed as proposed in the PIP (privately-initiated proposal) the project will elevate the status of JKIA and also offer an increase in job opportunities to the people of Kenya,” said Adani.
In Kenya, Adani is being represented by well-known law firm Dentons, Hamilton Harrison & Mathews, where lawyer Adil Khawaja is a senior partner. President William Ruto’s son, Nick Ruto, also works at the law firm.
Mr Khawaja also currently serves as the chairman of Safaricom, which is the local face of the UHC contract.
But it has also emerged that the events that led to Adani’s proposed takeover of JKIA kicked more than two years ago, when President Ruto took office.
A study – whose findings are yet to be publicly released - that was undertaken by a Spanish firm in 2022 purportedly revealed a significant gap in the necessary infrastructure at JKIA to handle increased passenger traffic opened the door for the entry of Adani Group into Kenya.
Spanish logistics and transport consultancy firm ALG Global was picked by the National Treasury’s Public Private Partnerships (PPP) Directorate to create a national aviation policy as well as the investments that the country needed to make in its aviation infrastructure in the medium-term to establish itself as a major aviation hub.
ALG Global is a subsidiary of Indra Group, a Madrid-based holding company with interests in global defence, air traffic and space companies.
The firm, which has 57,000 workers worldwide, made €4.343 billion (Sh624.5 billion) revenues in 2023.
“ALG was engaged by Kenya’s Ministry of National Treasury and Planning to provide consultancy services for the development of an aviation policy for Kenya, and to review the proposed medium-term investment requirements for enhancing its aviation infrastructure and related services, particularly at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi,” says the Spanish firm on its official website.
When he appeared before the Senate Committee on Roads, Transport and Housing last week, Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir revealed that ALG’s study set the stage for the pivot towards public private partnerships (PPPs) for development of airports due to financial constraints at the exchequer.
“The infrastructure deficit was an output of the National Aviation Policy study and Medium-Term Investment Plan of December 2022 done by ALG of Spain,” said Mr Chirchir.
“The government is pursuing the PPP model on account of fiscal constraints in the face of acute infrastructure constraints,” he said.
Once ALG finished the National Treasury assignment, it was also handpicked by the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) to undertake a feasibility study on JKIA, which would later be used in the Adani deal.
KAA revealed that ALG was not competitively recruited to undertake the feasibility study on JKIA and that it was singularly sourced.
“We rode on their institutional memory and the fact that they had data so we recruited them directly to do for us the feasibility study,” said KAA acting Managing Director Henry Ogoye when he appeared before the Senate alongside Mr Chirchir.
Additionally, ALG was also involved in the drafting of the Heads of Terms between KAA and Adani. Heads of Terms are preliminary agreements that precede substantive contract negotiations.
Mr Chirchir also named Kenyan law firm Ashitiva Advocates as one of the firms that were involved in the drafting of the document, even as Senators threatened to amend the law to force State officials to promptly reveal any privately-initiated proposals submitted by investors.
“I think the committee will be making a recommendation that we make an amendment to the law on PPP (that) immediately somebody arrives at your office with a so-called privately-initiated proposal, within 48 hours you must disclose,” said Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna.
According to its website, Ashitiva Advocates describes itself as a specialist law firm in energy, natural resources and infrastructure, financial services and construction, telecommunications, media and technology.
“I do not have this information with me at the moment. Please let me consult Nelson Ashitiva (a senior partner at the firm) and we will respond on Monday,” said a representative of the law firm when contacted by Nation Africa for further information on its role in the Adani-JKIA deal.
Adani is also in talks with the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) for a Sh95 billion contract for the construction of three high voltage power transmission lines and two substations.
Adani is seeking to recoup Sh634.7 billion ($4.92 billion) from the investment over a period of 30 years.
