Julius Mwalemmade the headlines when he placed a multi-billion bid for Mumias Sugar. He offered a bid of Sh. 27.6 billion to take over troubled sugar miller Mumias in a lease program.
Like many of Kenya’s richest businessmen, Mwale is not short of controversy. He first rose to the public limelight in 2010 while describing himself as the President and Head of Strategy of US-based SBA Technologies Inc.
Mwale is a former air force engineer. He is financier behind a project dubbed Mwale City that allegedly seeks “to transform Lunza, a sleepy village in Kakamega County, into a ‘Silicon Valley’ worth at least Sh. 200 billion”. This project has hitherto remained a pipedream.
In 2022, Mwale claimed that he had partnered with an American firm to build a battery plant in the mineral rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to power smart cities.
The battery plant was allegedly to be constructed by the US Engineering and infrastructure firm KE International had reportedly enlisted Mwale as one of its key partners in the project.
The plant, Mwale claimed, would manufacture electric power storage batteries to power smart cities—which use technology to provide services and solve city problems– in Africa.
“We are investing in building a 16 Gigawatt (16 terawatt) battery manufacturing plant in the DRC, to help power our smart cities in Kenya and the rest of Africa,” Mwale said in a statement.
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Mwale was born in 1976 in Lunza Village, Butere, Kakamega County, Kenya, making him 47 years old (as of 2023). He is the son of Major Abel Mwale, a former Ugandan military officer who relocated to Kenya when Idi Amin took over the Ugandan government.
Not much is known about Mwale’s mother, but he revealed that his parents were entrepreneurs during past interviews.
His father is claimed to have helped develop Butere during the 1970s by helping build roads, clinics, installing electricity, and a telephone landline. Unfortunately, both his parents died when he was very young.
Mwale attended a primary school in Lunza village and then enrolled in Mukumu Boys Secondary School before pursuing a diploma in telecommunications engineering in college.
According to him, the technology field has a more extensive market than any other career.
“I knew by getting that (technology) I can compete with any person in the world. You know, being a dentist or a doctor is good, but I knew being a doctor in Kenya would limit me to only the environment and diseases in Kenya. However, being a telecommunications engineer, I would be global; I would be able to access resources globally,” he said in a previous interview.
He later joined the Kenyan Airforce, majoring in technology research and internet infrastructure.
It is, however, alleged that he was embroiled in a tussle with some individuals over intellectual property issues which forced him to flee the country.
Mwale first settled in Uganda but was paranoid about his security, forcing him to escape to Zimbabwe before flying to the US in 2001.
Mwale later managed to join Columbia University to study electrical engineering, even though his main focus was to use this opportunity to create intricate connections.
He eventually launched SBA Technology, a company for which he claimed to be the president and head of strategy.
The company allegedly pioneered wave-based biometric systems and was located in New York, an unusual locality for a technology firm.
The company claimed that it had 60 workers by 2003, and allegedly, among the first reputable clients that procured its services was the Bank of New York.
