At just 40, Edhah Nahdi, the Tanzanian businessman behind the recent takeover of East African Portland Cement Company (EAPCC), already has the demeanor of an older billionaire who understands the limits of wealth and the preciousness of time.
Even after clinching two mega deals in the lucrative cement sector in under a year, boosting his net worth in the process, the founder of the Tanzanian conglomerate Amsons Group still downplays his riches, brushing off the “tycoon” label as nothing more than a media exaggeration.
“Honestly, this wasn’t my expectation, and as you know, the media often creates its own narrative,” Mr Nahdi says in a written response about being labeled a tycoon in headlines.
"I am just a simple businessman with a vision of making an input in prospecting economic growth for self as well as empowering others," adds Mr Nahdi.
Setting aside any modesty, Mr Nahdi is undoubtedly wealthy. His fortune straddles transportation, cement, energy, and milling, which he has been tapping into to cut major deals around the region.
Last week, Amsons’ subsidiary Kalahari Cement Limited completed the buyout of a 29.2 percent stake in EAPCC, valued at Sh718.66 million, from Swiss multinational Holcim.
The deal comes hardly a year after Amsons completed the full acquisition of Bamburi Cement in December for Sh23.6 billion, cementing its hold on Kenya’s cement market.
With Bamburi already holding 12.5 percent of EAPCC, Amsons will become the single largest shareholder with a 41.75 percent stake — a move that sparked concerns among lawmakers, who even threatened to veto the deal.
Kalahari Cement is controlled by Nahdi through his wholly owned Mauritius-based investment companies — Pacific Cement (90 percent) and Comercio Et Consiel (10 percent).
In Bamburi, his stake is held through an investment vehicle called Amsons Industries Kenya.
The ownership in EAPCC will effectively give companies controlled by Mr Nahdi, the muscle to access strategic information in two of Kenya's top cement firms, which together account for 31 percent of the country's production capacity of 14.5 million tonnes per annum, raising anti-trust concerns alluded to by lawmakers.
The double acquisition, valued at a combined $186.6 million (Sh24.1 billion), makes him the leading Tanzanian investor in Kenya.
With the acquisition, he stretches his lead against Rostam Aziz, another Tanzanian tycoon, who is building a 30,000-tonne cooking gas plant and storage facilities at the port of Mombasa, worth $120 million (Sh15.5 billion).
Recently, there has been a noticeable increase in capital flow from Tanzania into Kenya — an irony that will not be lost on historians, given Tanzania’s socialist, or ujamaa, legacy.
At one point, Dar es Salaam’s socialist architecture clashed with Nairobi’s unbridled capitalism, with founding father Julius Nyerere famously describing it as a “man-eat-man society” (Nairobi countered by describing Tanzania as a “society-eat-man society”).
But this appears to have changed, as Tanzania moved away from Nyerere’s command economy and gradually embraced a free-market model, minting billionaires such as Mr Nahdi in the process.
Today, these wealthy entrepreneurs are flocking to Nairobi, the region’s undisputed hub of capitalism.
“The answer is simple: Capital follows opportunity, and of course good political relations tend to foster economic and social growth,” says Mr Nahdi, noting that Kenya’s President William Ruto and his Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu have worked very hard to inspire confidence for bilateral investments.
“Many Tanzanian investors are exploring local operations, and the same is true about Kenyan investors exploring opportunities in Tanzania,” he adds.
Following President Samia’s Nairobi visit in May 2021, Kenya and Tanzania would later resolve several restrictive regulations that had impeded trade between the two countries, according to a report by the National Treasury.
Mr Nahdi notes that last year, within the African continent, Tanzania was Kenya’s second most important import goods country of origin at Sh58.7 billion, just a slot after South Africa, which was a source of imported goods valued at Sh64.3 billion.
Kenya’s exports to Tanzania dropped marginally to Sh67.2 billion in 2024 from Sh69.2 billion a year earlier, with only Uganda being a bigger market for Kenyan goods at Sh125.9 billion.
The flow of goods between the two countries might have recently been impeded by post-election violence in Tanzania, but it could not stop capital movement from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, as Kalahari Cement Limited completed the EAPCC buyout on July 31, 2025.
“Kenya has always focused to the West and East for sizeable FDI (foreign direct investment) flows and perhaps tended to overlook the neighbouring countries,” says Mr Nahdi.
“It is now clear that FDI receipts can also be sourced from our neighbours, particularly Tanzania,” he adds, urging Kenyan conglomerates to emulate the Amsons Group and plunge into the Tanzanian market.
But he is challenging Kenyan investors to go beyond the usual food imports and exports of soap and medicaments. To most Kenyans, cement might be the most visible money-minter, but Mr Nahdi’s treasure trove runs much deeper. In fact, cement is a relatively late addition to Amsons’ stable.
Mr Nahdi got his start in business in the transportation sector at just 19, immediately after finishing high school in Egypt. He started with 20 trucks, and he has since grown this into a fleet of around 800 trucks, which move goods such as cement, construction materials, fuel, and industrial products within and across countries in East and Southern Africa.
In 2006, Amsons unveiled Camel Oil, its flagship petroleum company. Camel Oil started out as a bulk importer of oil and petroleum products but has since evolved into a full-fledged energy company.
In addition to importing petroleum products, Amsons Group deals in fuel, lubricants and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The group operates fuel depots across several countries, including Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and the DRC, supported by a network of over 150 retail stations.
The group’s portfolio extends to a 500 tonnes-per-day wheat flour milling plant, a premix concrete facility, and a network of inland container depots.
But it was in 2012 that Amsons made a bold move into the cement sector, acquiring a 600 tonnes-per-day local grinding plant — a facility they have since expanded into a 2,400 MT-per-day factory.
Since then, they have aggressively grown their cement portfolio, acquiring, in addition to Bamburi and EAPCC in Kenya, Mbeya Cement in Tanzania.
As busy as he might be overseeing this commercial juggernaut, he is quick to note that he has worked out his work-life balance nicely. “While I prefer to keep details about my immediate family private, I can tell you that my personal commitments are important priorities that I take very seriously,” says Mr Nahdi.
In Kenya, Amsons’ investment appetite has been fueled by what Mr Nahdi calls the country’s “very vibrant economic market, with one of the fastest-growing building and construction sectors.”
“The addressable market for quality cement production [in Kenya] is large, and there is abundant quality raw material locally,” he explains. Kenyan lawmakers’ fierce resistance is just a prelude to the cutthroat struggle that awaits Amsons, in a cement sector controlled by steel magnate Narendra Raval of the Devki Group.
Devki Group, through the Athi River-based National Cement, has the largest limestone deposits, the main material for clinker production. Clinker is the main raw material for cement production. Other local cement companies include Mombasa Cement, Rai Cement, Savannah Cement, Ndovu Cement and Riftcot Limited.
Asked if the prolonged parliamentary review of his EAPCC acquisition was merely bureaucratic red tape impeding investment, or a vital safeguard for Kenya’s economic interests, Mr Nahdi responds: “I’d prefer to reserve my comments for my autobiography, which I may end up penning in a few years to come, God willing.”
