Kenya’s elites, including the church, use ponzi schemes for predatory accumulation and Kenyans will continue to see their dreams deferred if the law doesn’t change.
As precarity grows worldwide, many in Kenya are turning to Ponzi schemes that lure them with the promise of inclusive borrowing conditions and returns that will help them realize their dreams. Instead they are the subject of a predatory accumulation that scatters their aspirations, prompts debt and even suicide. The post is republished from The Elephant, the Kenyan news and information website, and is part of a series of selections curated by Wangui Kimari, an editorial board member of Africa Is a Country.
All names in this post have been anonymized to protect identities.
When Michael Kariuki first heard about Ekeza Sacco in 2016, he was quietly excited. He was listening to Kameme FM, the popular Gikuyu language radio station, when host Njogu wa Njoroge began talking about a new savings opportunity live on air. What wa Njoroge described was intriguing. Ekeza’s promise was of a middle-class lifestyle embodied in homeownership, entrepreneurship and family success. Through such radio broadcasts, television adverts and even its own campaign bus, Ekeza exhorted Kenyans to join the Sacco in order to pursue their dreams and aspirations, to use loans for “putting up a residential house, buying a dream car, purchasing a plot/piece of land, start a business or any other venture.” Like other Savings and Credit Cooperatives in Kenya (Saccos for short), Njoroge explained how Ekeza was offering its members the opportunity to withdraw three times the amount of their savings in the form of a loan.
But there was an important twist to Ekeza’s offer, one that gave members a distinct advantage. Unlike other Saccos, Ekeza was offering loans without the need for guarantors—other Sacco members who personally put up their savings as a guarantee for another member’s loan. Instead, at Ekeza, the title deeds and logbooks of the properties and vehicles that members would eventually purchase with their loans would act as loan securities. In other words, Ekeza was offering easy access to capital that is hard to come by in contemporary Kenya where banks charge high interest rates and Saccos require social membership. For Kariuki, that a guarantor was not required made saving with Ekeza an attractive opportunity—the chance to obtain capital that would allow him to purchase a car and become a taxi driver without having to undertake the difficult task of finding other Sacco members to stand in as his guarantors. Along with thousands of other Kenyans, Kariuki soon joined the Sacco.
A construction worker who worked long, hard days in the heat of Mombasa, Kariuki went on to save KSh180,000 with Ekeza over the next two years, sending money to his Sacco savings account directly from his MPesa account on his mobile phone. It was the first time in his life that Kariuki had ever saved such a large amount of money. He told me of the sacrifices he and his family made so that he could put more of his earnings into his savings, that there were “some things”—basic necessities and even food—they had to forego in the hope that his savings, and the taxi business that he would start with the loan, would allow him to build them a better future.
But in December 2017, Kariuki started to realize something was wrong. He had gone to withdraw a loan of KSh25,000 from the Sacco’s office in Thika. After filling out the paperwork, he was asked by Ekeza staff to wait the normal 60 days that it would take for the loan to be cleared and arrive in his account. Kariuki went back to Mombasa and waited, but his loan never arrived.
In January 2018, he returned to the office to find out what had happened with his loan. Ekeza staff assured him that his loan was on its way and he was asked to wait again but this time Kariuki refused. Suspecting something was wrong with the Sacco itself, he asked to withdraw all his savings at a fee of KSh1000. Kariuki filled out the paperwork and was once again asked to wait for 60 working days for his savings to reach his bank account.
In March 2018, four days before he was due to receive his savings, Kariuki’s wife called him. She had seen on the news that Ekeza had been officially deregistered by the Kenyan government pending investigations into its accounts. With the SACCO’s accounts frozen, Kariuki could do nothing but wait; he returned to the Ekeza office three times in 2018 and 2019 asking about the status of his savings, to no avail. Like tens of thousands of other Ekeza members, he has been stuck in limbo ever since.
The Ekeza Sacco story
Michael Kariuki’s story is a fairly common one for members of Ekeza Sacco—that after carefully building their savings for around two years, they were finally on the brink of receiving a loan, only to find it constantly delayed before eventually discovering that the SACCO had been deregistered by the government. But even Kariuki’s story is just one aspect of the Ekeza debacle. Other Sacco members reported how Gakuyo “bought” land from them without ever paying them in full. Others had their land and vehicles seized even after repaying their loans in full. All told, members lost around KSh2.6 billion in savings.
In March 2018, Commissioner of Co-operatives Mary Mungai formally closed Ekeza pending an investigation and an audit of the Sacco’s accounts. Suddenly, the Sacco’s 53,000 members were plunged into confusion and concern about the fate of their savings. The Sacco’s chairman, David Ngari Kariuki, an evangelical church pastor known as Gakuyo, assured members that their savings were safe. However, an audit of Ekeza’s accounts revealed around KSh1.5 billion of irregular transfers to bank accounts of persons and businesses associated with the chairman.
The audit report revealed fraud on an enormous scale but little has been done to address the plight of the members who have lost their savings. Over the last two years, Ekeza has maintained that its liquidity was damaged by rumors rather than Gakuyo’s expropriation of funds. In the aftermath of the Commissioner’s audit, Ngari moved to sell several of his assets and has repeatedly assured members that their deposits will be refunded, announcing a new 5-tier schedule for doing so in January 2020. Audaciously, Ekeza offered its members plots of land in what were seen as sub-par locations, their monetary worth far below what members had invested. Whilst Ekeza insists that it has refunded thousands of its members, particularly those with savings worth less than KSh50,000, reports from Ekeza victims suggest that there are many more thousands who are yet to receive their money. On social media, victims’ groups continue to organize, but with waning hope that they will ever see their money returned.
Over the past three years, I have been exploring the effect the fallout of Ekeza’s deregistration and the subsequent uncertainty faced by its members. The majority live in muted hope, actively choosing not to think about the money because of the stress the loss of their savings has caused them. Marriages have been ruined. Some Ekeza members have committed suicide after losing their savings. The overwhelming story is one of bitterness and anger towards Ngari. The words of the man I have anonymized in this article as Kariuki give some sense of that bitterness:
If I could be like a soldier holding a gun, I could be searching for that man just to kill him and leave everything. If I die, I die. Because that money, it was my first time to enter into a SACCO, save things. I have never saved an amount like that.
This article aims to recap the story of Ekeza Sacco—how it came to prominence, how its deregistration has shaped the lives of its members, and how its collapse reveals the illusory promises of the “working class” dream in contemporary Kenya, how aspirations of leading better material lives are undermined by political authority. The story of Ekeza Sacco is not merely one of fraud, but also one of frustration and anguish with a contemporary Kenya that works for the powerful few, depriving ordinary citizens of the material basis on which they might build their dreams.
The rise, the fall, and the resistance
Ekeza Sacco was established in 2013 and formally registered in 2014, but it rose to prominence in the run-up to Kenya’s 2017 elections. Throughout the first half of the year, the Sacco was regularly advertised on Gikuyu language radio stations like Kameme FM alongside its partner firm, Gakuyo Real Estate. During the same period, Ngari attempted to vie for governorship of Kiambu, but eventually joined Ferdinand Waititu’s “United 4 Kiambu” team, an alliance of Kiambu politicians (including current governor James Nyoro) through which Waititu contested and ultimately won the gubernatorial seat. Through his association with Waititu, Ngari appeared at rallies across the county throughout 2017. At the time, friends and acquaintances of mine in Kiambu were optimistic of the impact Ngari would have on the county through his association with the prospective new governor. “He will be the one bringing development, I am sure,” one Kiambu farmer told me.
At the same time, an Ekeza Sacco-branded mobile truck was traveling around Kiambu exhorting people to “Invest to nurture your dreams.” “His adverts were so convincing,” one member told me. Another told me how Ekeza’s near-ubiquitous presence made him believe in its legitimacy. “It was everywhere during the elections.” Whilst the new Sacco gained prominence and legitimacy through its relentless advertising campaign, for many of those who joined the Sacco in 2016 and 2017, it was Ngari’s status as a pastor…