October 7 2026 16:00
Nairobi Gate in Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi Gate Industrial Park, the special economic zone (SEZ) on the city’s Eastern Bypass developed by South African logistics property specialist Improvon and global infrastructure investor Actis, has been named Best New Industrial, Logistics or Alternative Asset in the Development category at the 2026 Africa Property Investment (API) Awards.
The award was presented on 17 September 2026 at the 10th edition of the API Awards, the centrepiece of the 17th annual API Summit at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). The event drew more than 600 real estate, hospitality and capital leaders from across the continent.
The win caps a remarkable eight-year journey for a project that was launched in September 2018 as a KES11bn (about $110m) bet that Nairobi was ready for grade-A, institutional-quality warehousing. It also marks the second time Nairobi Gate has been crowned at the API Awards, having taken the Best Industrial Development title at the 2021 ceremony, which was held virtually during the pandemic. The park was also a finalist in the Industrial, Logistics & Alternative Assets category at the 9th API Awards in 2025.
From bare land to a 36-tenant SEZ
Nairobi Gate is developed by Impact North, the joint venture between Improvon and Actis. Actis bought the 103-acre site in the Northlands precinct off the Eastern Bypass and funded the development, while Improvon brought more than two decades of experience in building and managing logistics parks in South Africa and Zambia.
At the launch in 2018, Improvon CEO Stefano Contardo said the park would bring a “‘build to suit’ concept to Nairobi”, responding to occupiers’ demand for grade-A, flexible space. The idea was simple but, at the time, new to the Kenyan market: large, modern sheds with wide column grids, generous volumetric capacity, wide roads and turning circles that could handle interlink trucks, high security and integrated corporate offices, all set in a landscaped, park-like environment.
The location was chosen with logistics in mind. The Eastern Bypass connects the park to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the Nairobi Inland Container Depot and the main routes to up-country Kenya via Thika Road and the Southern Bypass, without trucks having to cross Nairobi’s congested central business district.
Phase 1, which included the bulk infrastructure and the first two warehouses of between 5,000m² and 10,000m², was commissioned and handed over in October 2020, in the middle of Covid-19. Turner & Townsend provided project management on the development, while GAPP Architects & Urban Designers was responsible for the urban design framework and architectural services.
Since then the park has grown steadily. Speaking to Business Day in September, Nairobi Gate MD Dean Shillaw said the park had developed about 50,000m² of industrial space, with more than $60m (R975m) invested. It is about 80% occupied by 36 tenants, roughly 65% of which are international businesses. About three-quarters are licensed SEZ enterprises, including American Express and US chemical distributor Ecolab, as well as an international cosmetics manufacturer.
Other occupiers span pharmaceuticals, chemicals, fast-moving consumer goods, cold-chain storage, exporters and humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross. By late 2025, the park’s development had already created more than 430 permanent jobs.
Why the SEZ status matters
What sets Nairobi Gate apart from most industrial parks on the continent is not only the quality of its buildings but its regulatory infrastructure.
The park is fully gazetted as a special economic zone and holds a free-trade zone licence. In 2023 it became the first SEZ in East Africa to operationalise a fully integrated customs-controlled area (CCA). About 40% of the park now operates within that customs boundary.
In practice, this means goods destined for tenants in the CCA are not cleared at the Port of Mombasa. Duties are only payable when products leave the controlled area and enter the domestic market. Qualifying businesses can store, handle, break bulk, repack, consolidate and distribute goods under customs control, which gives companies using Kenya as a regional distribution base much more flexibility — and significant cash-flow savings.
The park consolidates the regulators that importers and exporters have to deal with, including the Kenya Revenue Authority, Kenya Ports Authority, customs officials and the Special Economic Zones Authority (SEZA), in one place. Weighbridges and customs-controlled gatehouses are built into the site.
Getting there took patience. Improvon built the customs infrastructure in 2018, but the CCA only became operational five years later, once the necessary government approvals were secured and the relevant agencies brought on board.
Shillaw has used that experience to warn South African policymakers that tax incentives alone are not enough to make SEZs competitive. He told Business Day that Kenya’s SEZ space was “about 10 years ahead of South Africa’s”, arguing that the real difference lies in legislation and in making systems work on the ground. Investors, he said, need regulatory certainty and functioning customs operations before they commit capital.
It is a pointed message as National Treasury proposes reforms to the SEZ tax regime, including making the preferential 15% corporate tax rate accessible to more operators.
A green building first for Kenya
Sustainability has been part of the Nairobi Gate story from day one, and it has its own string of accolades.
The park’s first warehouses became the first buildings in Kenya — and the first outside South Africa — to be rated under both the Green Building Council of South Africa and Kenya Green Star tools.
Nairobi Gate has also achieved certification under EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies), the green building standard developed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group. According to Bureau Veritas, which certified the project, the park is predicted to use 30% less energy and 33% less water than a conventional equivalent, with 51% less embodied carbon in its materials.
Design features include maximised natural light and passive temperature regulation, which help reduce operating costs for tenants — an increasingly important consideration for multinationals with group-wide carbon targets.
Room to grow
With much of the 103-acre site still to be developed, there is significant runway ahead.
In late 2024, Improvon announced a KES903-million investment in Kenya’s agro-processing industry at Nairobi Gate, at a time when the park offered more than 550,000ft² of international-grade warehousing and roughly 23% of the site had been developed.
The park has also launched a dedicated 100,000m² manufacturing and warehousing park for the textile and apparel industry; Kenya’s second-largest manufacturing sector after food processing which positions Nairobi Gate to capture investment from manufacturers looking to diversify their East African supply chains.
The next phase of leasable stock, the Mara development, was scheduled to come online in 2026 to meet demand as occupancy climbed.
Funding partners have backed the expansion. Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) has provided Improvon with a flexible dollar-based funding package for Nairobi Gate, including a land-banking solution, development funding and a term facility to take out the development loans. This was RMB’s first transaction with Improvon outside South Africa.
Actis’s backing has also evolved. General Atlantic completed its acquisition of Actis in October 2024, and Actis now operates as General Atlantic’s sustainable infrastructure business, with supply-chain transformation one of its core investment themes. Torbjörn Caesar continues to lead the firm.
A benchmark for African logistics
The API Awards are judged by a panel of industry experts and thought leaders and are regarded as the continent’s definitive peer-to-peer recognition for real estate and hospitality development.
Winning the industrial category twice, first for the original development and now for the matured SEZ, underlines how far Nairobi Gate has come. When it launched, Kenya had only a handful of institutional-grade warehouse parks, and most occupiers operated from older, fragmented facilities in industrial areas around the city. Actis said at the time that it expected firms to migrate to better locations and to consolidate into single facilities to gain economies of scale. The park’s tenant roster suggests that thesis has played out.
GAPP described the park as setting new benchmarks for industrial and logistics developments in East Africa, and said the award reflected the strength of the partnership between Improvon and Actis and the dedication of the whole project team.
For South African investors watching the rest of the continent, Nairobi Gate is a useful case study. It shows that a South African developer can export its logistics expertise, partner with a long-term institutional investor, and build a dollar-based, multinational tenant base in a market where A-grade industrial stock remains scarce. It also shows that, in African logistics, regulatory infrastructure can be as valuable as bricks and mortar.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
Learn more about logistics and Nairobi Gate here with the latest episode of the Another Brick in the Wall podcast.
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