Ghanaian tycoon Joseph Siaw Agyepong's $132 million Kenyan waste deal is challenged in court

Zoomlion holds waste management contracts in both of Kenya's largest cities, and both are being challenged.

The Ghanaian company, part of Joseph Siaw Agyepong's Jospong Group, signed a 35-year agreement with Mombasa County worth 17 billion shillings, about $132 million, and holds a separate two-decade contract from Nairobi County covering collection, haulage, sorting, recycling and disposal.

The Centre for Litigation Trust, a Mombasa civil society organisation, has asked the High Court to declare the coastal contract illegal, arguing that Governor Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir's administration failed to meet requirements on procurement, public participation and environmental law. The Kenyan outlet Kenya Insights has reported that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission is also examining the agreement.

The Nairobi award faces separate objections. The contract was tendered under reference NCC/ENV/RFP/109/2025-2026 and opened on Jan. 8, and critics argue the process bypassed the Public Procurement Directorate in breach of rules governing public-private partnerships. Local firms, some owned by politicians, have been displaced from a market they had controlled for years.

The work is already underway. Zoomlion Kenya has identified about 409 illegal dump sites across Nairobi and begun clearing them, aiming to finish within 90 days. The former Dandora dumpsite, which handled roughly 100 tonnes a day before the company arrived, now processes more than 832 tonnes a week. A plant at Muraai capable of handling 3,500 tonnes a day is due for commissioning by the end of November.

Zoomlion Waste Services Ltd was incorporated in Kenya on Aug. 23 last year, with Zoomlion Ghana Limited as sole shareholder. Said Haidar and Joseph Kwame Siaw Agyepong were listed as directors, alongside the Mombasa lawyer Heeral Vishal Soni as the only Kenyan.

The company's record in Ghana is what Kenyan critics have raised. A parliamentary committee examining the GYEEDA youth employment programme, which spent close to $500 million between 2009 and 2012, found that Zoomlion had received payments for work it did not perform and had overcharged the state, including by 25 million cedis on a tricycle supply. The committee recommended terminating its contract. Successive Ghanaian governments did not act, and the company kept receiving payments after the agreement expired in February 2013.

Agyepong has described the expansion in different terms. Meeting Nassir in Mombasa in July last year, he said the group's mission is to turn Africa's sanitation challenges into engines of opportunity and growth, and that entering Kenya was about sharing experience, building local capacity and supporting African-led development.

President William Ruto has backed the company publicly, visiting the Jospong stand at the Devolution Conference in Homa Bay in August last year and praising its work in Ghana.