A steady flow of Kenyan politicians, starting with Daniel arap Moi, the former president, have tried to buy Fani Kruger’s 5,000-acre wheat farm. Mr Kruger, the sole remaining landowner descended from the Afrikaners who settled on the fertile Uasin Gishu plateau above the Rift valley a century ago, has resisted. A voluble, thickset man, passionate about the region he farms, he also turned down a group of Israelis seeking what he saw as an improbable return on their investment.
Instead, he is selling for less money to a very different kind of buyer – an innovative community investment fund, Emo, meaning fellowship in the language of the local Kalenjin ethnic group. He and Emo’s leading shareholders hope that decision will come to play an influential role in shaping one of the country’s most pressing debates: how to render the country’s limited arable land more productive while simultaneously defusing conflicts over its ownership first sparked during British colonial times.
