Kenya to get 10 mother-and-child hospitals under Amsons’ Ksh.4.5 billion grant

• President William Ruto said the funding would not create a repayment obligation for the government, describing the contribution as a grant rather than a loan.

President William Ruto is joined by Amsons Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Edha Nahdi and other officials during the groundbreaking ceremony for the first of 10 specialised Mother and Child hospitals being developed across Kenya under Amsons Group’s $35 million Mama na Mtoto Kwanza initiative.

Kenya is set to receive 10 specialised mother-and-child hospitals under a $35 million (Ksh.4.5 billion) grant from Amsons Group, in a programme that could test how privately financed health infrastructure can be integrated into the country’s public healthcare system.

Construction has begun on the first facility, a 250-bed Level 4 hospital in Chebunyo, Bomet County. The hospital will include maternity suites, operating theatres, neonatal intensive care services and facilities for antenatal, delivery and postnatal care.

President William Ruto said the funding would not create a repayment obligation for the government, describing the contribution as a grant rather than a loan.

“This facility is a grant from Amsons. It’s not a loan, and that’s the value of friendship,” Ruto said.

Under the arrangement, Amsons will finance the construction and equipping of the hospitals before handing them over to Kenyan authorities. The government will then take responsibility for staffing, medicines, maintenance and day-to-day operations.

That division of responsibility will be critical to determining the programme’s long-term impact.

While the grant covers the upfront cost of constructing and equipping the facilities, the government will still have to meet the recurring costs of running them, including salaries for healthcare workers, medicines, utilities, maintenance and other operational expenses.

Amsons Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Edha Nahdi said the company wanted to ensure its commitment translated into completed projects rather than remaining at the level of agreements.

“Our commitment would not remain on paper or inside boardrooms, but would reach the ground where healthcare needs are most urgent,” Nahdi said.

According to Amsons, the 10 hospitals are expected to serve up to 1 million mothers annually. The facilities are planned for Bomet, Nairobi, Kwale, Mombasa, Garissa, Kisumu, Embu, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu and West Pokot.

Nahdi said the programme seeks to address gaps in access to specialised maternal and newborn services, particularly in communities where women have to travel long distances to access emergency and specialised care during pregnancy and childbirth.

In Bomet, the Chebunyo hospital is expected to bring maternity and newborn services closer to communities in the county.

The initiative also differs from Amsons’ conventional commercial investments. The company will not retain the hospitals as commercial healthcare facilities but will hand them over to the government as public assets once construction and equipping are complete.

Nahdi said the programme forms part of Amsons’ broader approach of promoting “shared prosperity” by linking its commercial activities with community development.

Ruto, meanwhile, used the occasion to highlight Kenya’s investment environment and its economic ties within the East African Community, COMESA and the African Continental Free Trade Area.

He said foreign direct investment into Kenya had risen from about $1.6 billion to $3.2 billion over the past three years, citing Amsons among the investors contributing to the growth.

For the hospital programme, however, the immediate test will extend beyond construction.

A fully equipped hospital cannot deliver maternal and newborn services without adequate numbers of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, as well as reliable supplies of medicines, equipment maintenance and sufficient operating budgets.

The Chebunyo facility will therefore offer an early measure of whether the model can translate private capital into sustainable public healthcare capacity.

If the infrastructure is completed and the government provides the staffing and recurrent funding required to operate the facilities, the programme could offer Kenya an alternative way of expanding public healthcare capacity without relying on government borrowing to finance construction.

But if operational funding fails to keep pace with the new infrastructure, the benefits of the investment could be constrained.

The $35 million contribution is therefore more than a private-sector investment in hospital infrastructure. It is also a test of whether privately funded public-health facilities can be effectively absorbed into Kenya’s healthcare system and sustained over the long term.