Tycoon Narendra Raval spends $1.5bn on cement, steel plants

Kenyan industrialist Narendra Raval has committed more than Sh200 billion ($1.5 billion) over the past five years to building and buying cement and steel plants, as his Devki Group pushes beyond Kenya into Uganda and Rwanda.

The biggest single project is a Sh70 billion ($539 million) cement and clinker plant at Ngaaie in Kitui County, where President William Ruto led the groundbreaking on Oct. 27. Devki started construction in September and expects the plant, which will be Kitui’s first cement factory, to start operating in mid-2027. Ruto has said it will create 4,000 jobs.

Raval has also spent Sh45 billion ($346 million) on a clinker factory in West Pokot County, run by his Cemtech unit, which opened in 2024 with capacity to make 6,000 tons of clinker a day. Clinker is the main ingredient in cement, and Kenyan producers have been racing to make more of it at home since the government imposed a 17.5% levy on imported clinker in 2023.

In Rwanda, Devki bought cement maker Cimerwa Plc for Sh13.6 billion ($105 million) and has proposed a clinker plant in Musanze estimated to cost about Sh27 billion ($208 million).

The spending covers steel as well as cement. In November 2025, Ruto and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni launched Devki’s $500 million steel plant in Tororo, eastern Uganda. In Kenya, Devki opened a steel mill in Kwale County in 2022 and broke ground in December 2024 on an Sh11 billion ($85 million) iron ore processing plant at Manga, near Voi in Taita Taveta County.

Devki Steel Mills Ltd. is now seeking a licence to mine iron ore on about 7,370 acres in Taita Taveta to feed that plant. The application was published in the Kenya Gazette on Oct. 16, and the period for objections closes in late November.

Raval, who is widely known as “Guru,” moved to Kenya from India in 1981 at the age of 19. He built Devki into one of East Africa’s biggest makers of steel, roofing sheets and cement, with brands including Simba Cement, National Cement and Maisha Mabati, and operations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The expansion puts Devki in direct competition with other cement makers investing in East Africa, including Bamburi Cement, which Tanzanian conglomerate Amsons Group took over in 2025, and Dangote Cement, which operates in Tanzania. Raval’s rapid growth has also brought scrutiny, including disputes with Kenya’s tax authorities.

Figures were converted at Sh129.9 to the dollar.