Israeli Developer’s 520-Acre Project in Nakuru, Kenya Sparks Fears of Neo-Zionist Land Grab
Walter Akillah
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A 520-acre multi-use development project by Israeli developer Erez Rivkin in Kenya’s Rift Valley has ignited fierce debate, drawing parallels to the historical dispossession of Palestinians and reviving memories of a century-old British proposal to establish a Zionist homeland in East Africa.
The project, dubbed the “Great Rift Valley Retreat,” is located in Nakuru County's Solai area, northwest of Nairobi. It is being developed on freehold land, the highest form of land ownership under Kenyan law.
While Kenya’s 2010 Constitution restricts foreign ownership to 99-year leases, freehold titles can be held by Kenyan-registered companies, a loophole that has raised eyebrows among legal experts and activists.
Kenyans online have slammed the initiative, saying its ownership structure and foreign backing evoke uncomfortable echoes of colonial-era land alienation and Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories.
Still grappling with the legacy of British land seizures during colonial rule, Kenyans view the development as a potential precursor to foreign land dominance under the guise of investment.
“Kenya’s land history is deeply painful. Any large-scale foreign acquisition, especially by an Israeli developer, cannot be divorced from the global context of occupation and displacement,” an online user told KR.
As of December 2025, Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank had displaced more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to international monitors. Since October 2023, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 72,061 people and wounded 171,715, fueling global outrage and intensifying scrutiny of Israeli-linked ventures abroad.
The controversy has also revived historical memories of the “Uganda Programme," a 1903 British proposal to offer Zionist leader Theodor Herzl a large tract of land in what is now Kenya and Uganda as a potential Jewish homeland. The plan, intended as a temporary refuge for Jews fleeing European antisemitism, was ultimately rejected by the 1905 Zionist Congress, which reaffirmed the goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
The so-called “Uganda scheme,'' though the proposed territory lay within Kenya’s Nyanza, Western, and Rift Valley regions, caused deep divisions within the early Zionist movement. Herzl, who had outlined his vision in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), saw the East African option as a stopgap measure to protect Jews from persecution until the dream of a homeland in Palestine could be realized.
Today, the echoes of that abandoned plan resonate anew. The scale and symbolism of Rivkin’s project have led some commentators to question whether East Africa is once again being eyed as a site for Zionist expansion, or whether the comparison is an overreach fueled by historical trauma and today's events in Gaza.
Local leaders in Nakuru have welcomed the project’s promise of jobs and infrastructure, but civil society groups are demanding transparency about land acquisition, ownership structures, and environmental impact.
The National Land Commission has yet to issue a formal statement on the matter.
