Kenya has denied that a company linked to controversial Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo has won a multi-billion-US-dollar contract to expand the country’s main airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), in the capital Nairobi.
A section of Zimbabwean media, including the state-owned Herald newspaper, had earlier in the week reported that Chivayo’s company, IMC Construction, was part of a consortium that had won a $2.9-billion (375 billion Kenyan shillings) tender to expand the busy airport.
Kenya says that JKIA’s expansion will not cost the reported 375 billion shillings, but a maximum of 154.2 billion shillings ($1.2 billion), and that it will be financed largely through credit borrowed from development financial institutions.
Nairobi also rejected reports linking Chivayo’s company, IMC Construction, to the mega project, which seeks to significantly increase the passenger processing capacity of JKIA.
Kenya ‘seriously concerned’ with Chivayo links
“The government has taken note with serious concern reports appearing in sections of the media (stating that Chivayo’s firm will undertake JKIA’s expansion)… We wish to clarify that the company referred to in those reports (IMC Construction) did not participate in this procurement process as a bidder and has no role, involvement or association whatsoever with this project. They also are not part and parcel of the contractors who submitted bids to this tender,” Kenya’s Transport Minister Davis Chirchir said in a statement on Thursday.
Chirchir added that “all contractors were required to submit a legally binding disclosure of all parties in joint ventures and in none of them is the said-entity part of.” The minister did not disclose which company or consortium of companies had been awarded the tender to expand JKIA. President William Ruto recently indicated that construction works at the airport will begin in July, nearly two years after protests prompted Nairobi to cancel the JKIA expansion contract that had initially been awarded to India’s Adani Group.
Chirchir urged the media not to publish “unverified information” linking Chivayo to the renewed JKIA expansion plans, terming the reports “false.”
According to the transport minister, the process of awarding a contract to expand JKIA has been transparent, with application for bids opening on March 3, 2026, and closing on May 14. Additionally, the public participated in the process by submitting their views between November 2025 and April 2026, Chirchir added.
Upgrade
According to the minister, the chosen contractor will construct a new passenger terminal and rehabilitate the existing JKIA terminals and airfield.
“This will include an upgrade and expansion of the existing terminal buildings, rehabilitation of the existing airfield, and a construction of new green field terminal facilities, airfield infrastructure, aircraft aprons, taxiways, utility networks, access roads, aviation systems, operational support facilities and all associated infrastructure required for a modern international airport,” Chirchir said.
These constructions, according to Kenya, will raise JKIA’s passenger capacity from 7.5 million currently to 22 million.
Zimbabwean media report JKIA tender awarded to Chivayo’s firm
While Nairobi has rejected Chivayo’s reported involvement in bidding for the JKIA expansion contract, several media outlets from Zimbabwe, where Chivayo comes from, have reported that the businessman had already secured the contract to rehabilitate and build new airport facilities in Kenya. On several occasions, Chivayo has visited Kenya and met with President Ruto at State House, Nairobi.
As per Zimbabwe’s state-owned Herald newspaper, the JKIA expansion lead-contractor is the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), with its subsidiary the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), tasked with delivering the expansive project alongside Chivayo’s firm.
Citing an unnamed highly-placed source within CCCC, the Herald reported on Thursday: “The tender has been awarded to the joint venture between IMC Construction and China Communications Construction Company, and construction should be completed within three years of the parties concluding the Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract.”
The state-owned Chinese company is yet to respond to the Herald’s report.
Chivayo serves prison time
Chivayo, 43, was born in November 1982 in Harare, where he pursued primary and secondary education. There is no publicly confirmed record of him pursuing college education.
On his Facebook page, he says he started off as a wage clerk of a bus company in Zimbabwe in 1997.
Zimbabwean media report that Chivayo, thereafter, joined the unregulated foreign exchange business in the capital.
In 2004, he was sentenced to three years in prison for deceiving a South African national that he would deposit over $100,000 in the South African’s account in exchange for $46,000, though in South African rand currency. Chivayo served time at the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare.
Fictitious websites
In March 2011, Zimbabwe’s state-controlled newspaper, The Chronicle, reported that Chivayo had allegedly created fictitious websites, which unsuspecting clients believed could help them procure goods.
According to The Chronicle, the websites would disappear upon receiving payments.
Chivayo would make news headlines again not long thereafter.
In September 2019, the former chairperson of the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), Stanley Kazhanje, was jailed for three years for receiving $10,000 from Chivayo’s company, Intratrek Zimbabwe.
The trial established that in October 2015, ZPC, through Kazhanje, had given Chivayo’s company a $183-million contract to construct a 100-megawatt solar station in Zimbabwe’s southwestern district of Gwanda.
‘Philanthropist’
Harare Magistrate Hosea Mujaya established that Chivayo’s company did not fulfill the contractual obligation, but in January 2016 Chivayo gave Kazhanje $10,000.
Interestingly, a few years later when Chivayo’s firm sued for unlawful termination of a contractual agreement, ZPC was ordered to pay Intratrek $22 million in damages.
In March 2018, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa vowed to institute the arrest of Chivayo, whom he described as “fly-by-night briefcase businessman.”
In February 2025, the president described Chivayo as a “philanthropist.”
Chivayo rejects allegations linking him to fraud
Chivayo, a father of two, has been linked to other tenders relating to elections, security, internet connectivity, and cancer treatment.
He vehemently rejects allegations which link him to fraud, saying he is a legitimate businessman, who has “haters” and people riding on his name for “political relevance.”
After meeting Kenya’s President Ruto at State House, Nairobi, on June 15, 2026, Chivayo lauded the head of state for “championing rural electrification and expanding access to affordable energy” in Kenya.
In Zimbabwe, Chivayo’s firm, IMC Construction, won several multi-million-US-dollar energy contracts, including a $175-million tender to build a 100-megawatt solar project, a $163-million contract to upgrade a power station, and a $131-million tender to construct a 30-megawatt hydroelectric power station.
