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A Nairobi judge has cleared the South African winemaker Namaqua Wines to end its relationship with WOW Beverages, the drinks company Humphrey Kariuki founded, in a dispute over 450 million shillings ($3.5 million) that WOW says it spent building the brand in Kenya.
Justice JRA Wananda delivered the ruling at the Milimani Commercial Courts on Sept. 18, in Commercial Case E711 of 2025. He refused to stop Namaqua Wines Distribution terminating the arrangement, declined to order it to keep supplying wine while the main case is heard, and discharged the interim orders that had been holding the relationship together.
The exclusivity WOW says it enjoyed was never written down. The judge found no formal contract, and held that whatever WOW had lost could be counted and claimed as damages at trial, which is the standard test for refusing an injunction.
He also dismissed WOW's attempt to have Namaqua held in contempt over unfulfilled purchase orders, and said the company was the author of its own misfortune, having put an ambiguously worded request to the court that was granted as asked and then turned out to be uncertain.
What WOW says it spent breaks into two parts. It told the court it had put more than 150 million shillings, about $1.2 million, into staff, distribution infrastructure, marketing and warehousing, and valued the goodwill it built at more than 300 million shillings, roughly $2.3 million. It asked to be paid that money, compensated for its effort, and confirmed as exclusive distributor in Kenya.
The relationship began in 2020, when Namaqua dropped a previous Kenyan distributor and said it would deal with WOW directly. WOW points to a letter dated Sept. 11, 2020 as having created exclusivity through the way both sides then behaved, while accepting nothing was signed.
Namaqua gave notice in 2025 that the arrangement would end from Nov. 1, citing concerns about product range, stock and payment. WOW sued that October.
The South African company told the court it had never suggested WOW should make those investments, and denied the relationship was exclusive at all.
Kariuki started the business that lost the case before he started anything else.
He was born in Nyeri, one of ten children, went to Nairobi School and Kagumo High School, and joined the Central Bank of Kenya at 19 as a clerk, later working in the department that approved foreign currency for importers. He used what he saved to import and sell cars, and in his late twenties founded Wines of the World, taking Kenyan distributorships for Jack Daniel's, Bacardi and the Edrington Group, owner of The Macallan and The Famous Grouse. The company now trades as WOW Beverages.
He explained the risk himself years ago. Kariuki told Forbes in 2017 that he had become a distributor for the big international drinks companies in his early twenties and then realised the brand owners could arrive in Kenya one day and take the sole distributorship away from him. That is why he built his own distillery, and it is what the High Court has now allowed Namaqua to do.
Africa Spirits, the Thika distillery he set up in the early 2000s, makes Blue Moon vodka and Legend brandy.
Both companies were caught in the largest tax case ever brought against a Kenyan businessman. Prosecutors charged Kariuki and directors of Africa Spirits and WOW Beverages in 2019 over an alleged 41 billion shillings of evaded tax between 2014 and 2019, after investigators raided the Thika plant and reported finding counterfeit excise stamps. He stepped down as chairman of his holding company to fight the case, and the Kenya Revenue Authority handed the distillery back to its owners in December 2022.
The rest of his businesses sit under Janus Continental Group, which operates in more than ten African countries as well as the United Arab Emirates and parts of Europe and employs over 700 people. It holds the oil products distributor Dalbit Petroleum, the power developer Great Lakes Africa Energy, The Hub shopping mall in Nairobi's Karen suburb and the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club at Nanyuki.
Outside business he is best known for animals. Kariuki funds the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy and its orphanage at Nanyuki, which breeds endangered species including the mountain bongo, an antelope down to a few dozen animals in the wild, for release back into Kenyan forests.
Namaqua renamed its distribution arm Niew Beverages last year under chief executive Koos van Dyk.
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