Kenyan tycoon Suleiman Shahbal signs a $100 million Mombasa deal with Dubai's DP World

Suleiman Shahbal's GulfCap Group has signed a three-way agreement with DP World and the Mombasa county government to build a 535-acre industrial zone at Jomvu, in a project valued at 12 billion shillings, more than $100 million.

The signing took place at State House in Nairobi on Tuesday, Sept. 8, witnessed by President William Ruto, who handed a developer's licence to DP World chairman Essa Kazim. Mohammed Akoojee, chief executive of DP World Africa, signed for the Dubai company, which operates ports, logistics facilities and free zones in 84 countries.

GulfCap holds its interest through a vehicle called Mombasa Free Zone Limited. The county supplies the land, a former Kenya Meat Commission cattle holding ground leased to the project.

A special economic zone is a designated area where companies operate under separate customs, tax and regulatory rules from the rest of the country, designed to attract manufacturers who would otherwise produce elsewhere. This one will host manufacturing, processing, assembly, branding, logistics and export operations, and its developers are pitching its position beside the port, the standard gauge railway and the regional road network.

Sixty-seven companies have confirmed they will take space before construction starts. GulfCap estimates 7,972 direct jobs in the first phase, with other projections running toward 10,000.

The purpose is to change what Mombasa does. The city has functioned as a transit point, moving imported cargo inland while exporting raw or barely processed commodities, and the zone is meant to turn it into a place where goods are made. Ruto said the project would help move Kenya from an agricultural economy to a production and export-oriented one, and that the country must stop exporting raw and minimally processed commodities.

The zone is aimed at markets across the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Ruto attached deadlines. He gave six months for the zone itself and 120 days for a one-kilometre access road connecting it to Mombasa's main trunk road, a commitment he said DP World's chairman had asked him for directly.

He also told Shahbal to give up politics.

Shahbal sits in the East African Legislative Assembly, the parliament of the East African Community, and intends to run for governor of Mombasa in 2027. Ruto said he was against it, telling Shahbal it is not easy to find people with his acumen, capacity, connections and willingness to make investments of this kind, and adding that in Kenya every successful person seems to think there is something for them in politics.

Shahbal has tried for the job before. He withdrew from the 2022 primary of the Orange Democratic Movement in favour of Abdulswamad Nassir, now the county's governor, after Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta intervened, and later said he had been offered a cabinet position during those discussions. Supporters who had backed him through several campaigns were angered by it.

Nassir attended Tuesday's signing, alongside Mining and Blue Economy Cabinet Secretary Hassan Joho.

Shahbal built his money in banking and fuel. He founded Gulf African Bank, Kenya's first Shariah-compliant lender, and Gulf Energy, in which the French group Rubis Énergie took a controlling stake in 2019 in a transaction valued at 16.4 billion shillings.

He described the agreement as the culmination of something he has chased for fifteen years, calling it a first of its kind project.