Africa-Press – Kenya. 300 Kenyans living and working in the US have successfully managed to build a multi-million housing project from scratch, cutting off middlemen predating on diaspora investors.
Located in the leafy Nairobi suburb bordering Kiambu county, the 87 units Kitisuru Amani of two and three-bedroom apartments spread across three blocks is fully done and ready for launch.
The project is owned by JRN Investment, also known as Jambo Diaspora Investment Group. The investment group was founded in 2013 and officially started conducting business in May 2015 with 202 members drawn from across 25 states in America.
“A project like this is a testimony that you can have Kenyans living abroad investing effectively and getting the project done to the standards they know back in where they live,” Wilson Wahungu, one of the founders of JRN Investment and firm’s CFO told the Star.
He explained that the project is fully funded by members, sourced Landmark Holdings as a contractor and supervised the construction through drones, zoom meetings and physical visits without involving middlemen.
“This has inspired not only Kenyans but citizens of other countries to start similar initiatives back home. We feel good that we are building home away from home,” Wahugu said.
“We contribute to job creation. Our contractors are Kenyans and the project offered job opportunities to up to 300 people in the country. Kitusuru Amani Garden is just the start for more to come”.
This is coming at a time reports are showing that diaspora investors are losing billions of shillings annually to middlemen, mostly family members.
The latest diaspora remittances survey by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows that diaspora investors lose a third of their cash due to misinformation, fraud, theft and corruption.
This is despite more than half of the money sent back home being allocated to three uses: real estate investment for the recipient, mortgage payment for the sender, and purchase of food and household goods.
According to the survey, most of them have lost billions due to investing through dubious relatives who don’t employ professionals in a bid to make money for themselves.
When taking over the office, Foreign and Diaspora Affairs Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua promised to protect the welfare of Kenyans living and working abroad.
“We want to protect the interest and lives of every Kenyan — those at home and those who go abroad — who are our primary responsibility. We will ensure that any Kenyan in the diaspora knows that this ministry and country cares about them,” he said.
Diaspora remittances have since become Kenya’s top foreign exchange earner beating major exports such as coffee, tea, and horticulture.
Last year, Kenyans living and working abroad sent over Sh453.6 billion compared to Sh345.4 billion in 2021, Sh345.4 billion in 2020 and Sh314.7 billion in 2019.
The US remains the largest source of remittances into Kenya, accounting for 58.5 per cent of the inflows .
CBK only measures the money remitted through formal channels, including commercial banks and other authorised international remittance service providers in Kenya.
Direct investment by diasporans is a double-bullet solution to fraud and high transaction costs.
According to CBK, the cost of sending funds is in the range of 4 – 5 per cent of the amount remitted while using the most dominant and preferred service providers like mobile money operators, money transfer companies and banks.
On average, the cost of sending funds was in the range of 4 – 5 percent of the amount remitted while using the most dominant and preferred service providers (mobile money operators, money transfer companies and banks).
Kenya has been toying with the idea of floating a diaspora bond since 2011.
In April, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua reignited the talk, assuring diasporans that the Kenya Kwanza regime is putting systems in place to ensure that they can invest in diaspora bonds.
“The conversation is going on for creating a diaspora bond. The government wants to create an investment forum guaranteed by the state for the people in the diaspora,” he said while in Botswana.
A diaspora bond is a bond issued by a country to its expatriates. These bonds allow developing countries in need of financing to look to ex-pats in wealthy countries for support. They offer migrants discounts on government debt from their home countries.
Even so, as the government delays, more diaspora communities are benchmarking with JRN Investment to directly and safely invest back home.
JRN is now set for the second phase of the project where they intend to build a mix of affordable apartments and duplexes in line with one of the pillars of President William Ruto’s affordable housing goal.
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