Ghanaian tycoon Joseph Siaw Agyepong's Zoomlion begins clearing Nairobi's 409 illegal dump sites

Joseph Siaw Agyepong's Zoomlion Kenya has begun the physical transformation of Nairobi's waste management system, clearing illegal dump sites across the Kenyan capital and ramping up daily processing capacity as the Jospong Group's East African expansion moves from contract to operations.

Speaking to Zoomlion Kenya staff at the company's Nairobi facility on May 13, Dr. Emmanuel Dagadu, a senior Jospong Group executive, confirmed that the company has already identified and begun clearing approximately 409 illegal dump sites scattered across Nairobi. The former Dandora dumpsite, which previously handled roughly 100 tonnes of waste per day, now processes more than 832 tonnes weekly under Zoomlion's management. The company has upgraded access roads and reorganised operations to support round-the-clock waste handling and transportation.

Zoomlion is targeting the clearance of all identified illegal dump sites within 90 days. The next phase involves the introduction of a secondary waste collection system. A 3,500-tonne-per-day waste processing plant at Muraai is scheduled for commissioning by the end of November 2026, designed to support recycling and resource recovery at industrial scale.

Siaw Agyepong was present at the staff address alongside Apostle Dr. Eric Nyamekye, chairman of the Church of Pentecost, who had participated in the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi before visiting the facility. The Church of Pentecost and Siaw Agyepong have a relationship stretching back to the 1990s. Nyamekye told staff that sustainable corporate and national development depends not on resources alone but on sound governance, disciplined work ethics and quality human capital.

Nairobi County Governor Johnson Sakaja awarded Zoomlion the 20-year waste management contract covering the city's entire solid waste system, including the management of the 76-acre Dandora dumpsite. The contract, which emerged from a tender process in which Zoomlion was the only bidder, has attracted scrutiny from civic groups, opposition politicians and legal challenges. The Anti-Corruption Commission has been examining aspects of a related 35-year, approximately $131 million Mombasa contract that involved a similar procurement structure.

Critics have also pointed to Zoomlion's history in Ghana, where the company became embroiled in the GYEEDA corruption scandal in 2013, one of the country's largest graft cases, and where its contracts with state agencies have drawn repeated parliamentary and civil society challenges. Supporters of the Kenya contracts argue the city's waste crisis is acute and requires the kind of integrated industrial capacity that smaller contractors cannot provide.

The broader Jospong Group signed a separate partnership with Belgian waste-to-energy firm VYNCKE at the IFAT environmental technology expo in Munich on May 6, combining Jospong's African waste management footprint with VYNCKE's European thermal conversion technology. The MoU covers thermal and biomass technologies, carbon capture and storage, and a framework for developing waste-to-energy projects tailored to African conditions across multiple countries.

Siaw Agyepong built Jospong from a printing press in the mid-1990s into one of Africa's most diversified privately-held environmental and industrial groups, with more than 60 subsidiaries across 14 sectors operating in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and beyond. Zoomlion Ghana Limited, the group's sanitation flagship, remains the best-known of those subsidiaries internationally, though Jospong's interests now span finance, construction, real estate, logistics and manufacturing alongside waste management.