President Uhuru Kenyatta’s cousin Kathleen Kihanya has been appointed to the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency board as a member.
“The Cabinet Secretary for Industry, Trade and Co-operatives appoints Jacqueline Muga, Kathleen Kihanya, Mark Bichachi, to be members of the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency Board, for a period of three years, with effect from August 9, 2019,” CS Peter Munya said in the gazette notice on Friday.
Kihanya runs Aces Ahead, a public relations and marketing consultancy, and is also a director and partner at 24 Hours Africa Ltd. In September last year, she kicked off a storm over the ownership of prime land on which a developer was putting up a Sh1 billion estate. She claimed Banda Homes, which was developing 120 units, had misled potential buyers on the land, a claim the investors strongly denied.
“This land belongs to my family and we are now in the process of subdivision and issuing separate titles,” Kihanya said in a statement.
Kihanya and Uhuru’s sister Nyokabi Kenyatta Muthama are also directors of Sundales International Limited, which pocketed Sh41 million in questionable payouts in the infamous Sh5.2 billion Mafya House Scandal. The company was registered on September 12, 2013 — five months after Uhuru’s election.
Linking the Mafya House Scandal to the President’s family, Raila Odinga, now Uhuru’s ally, said, “This scandal is President Kenyatta’s. He must deal with it as such. He must tell the country what he knows, when he knew it and what he did when he knew it.” It emerged that Sundales International Limited was listed in the Treasury’s roll of companies that should get preferential treatment for tenders reserved for the youth, women and the disabled.
Uhuru’s niece, Nana Gecaga, is also the Kenyatta International Convention Centre managing director.
