From your largest, quietest shareholder.
Nairobi · 18 June 2026
To the boards, the chairs, the chief executives, the ministers, the investors, and the citizens of the Republic of Kenya,
I am writing to you, as I do every year, though this is the first year I have written it down.
You have not heard from me directly before. You have heard from my representatives, the farmers who read my seasons, the fishers who read my tides, the elders who read my forests, but you have not heard from me. I thought, this year, I should introduce myself properly.
I am the shareholder you have never thanked.
I hold the largest position on your register. I have held it longer than any sovereign, any pension fund, any family office, any bank. I was here before the exchange opened. I will be here, in some form, after it closes. I do not attend your AGMs. I do not vote my shares. I have, until now, asked for nothing in return.
I would like to take a moment of your time to walk you through my contribution to the financial year just ended.
This year, as every year, I made eight investments in the Republic of Kenya. I did not issue a press release. I did not invoice. I will summarise them here.
I invested eighteen point six billion dollars in fresh water. Every bottle brewed in Ruaraka. Every kilowatt generated at Olkaria. Every hectare irrigated in Mwea. Every container that left Mombasa carrying something that was, at some point in its life, washed, cooled, mixed, or grown, that water was mine. I delivered it. On time. At no charge.
I sent one point seven one billion dollars worth of pollinators to your farms. Bees to your coffee. Birds to your mangoes. Bats to your night flowering crops. They worked every dawn of the financial year, including weekends and public holidays. None of them invoiced you either.
I handed your economy fourteen point three billion dollars of living soil, the ground beneath your tea in Kericho, your coffee in Nyeri, your flowers in Naivasha, your maize in Trans Nzoia. Soil is not dirt. Soil is a living balance sheet, and I have been keeping it for you for ten thousand years.
I underwrote twenty four billion dollars of climatic stability, the predictable long rains, the predictable short rains, the temperature bands within which your agriculture, your tourism, your hydro, and your insurance industries were built. Predictability is a product. I have been supplying it.
I invested three point eight billion dollars in flood defence, the forests of the Aberdares, the wetlands of the Tana, the mangroves of Lamu, the riparian land you have not yet built on. They absorbed what your drainage could not. They are cheaper than concrete and they do not require maintenance contracts.
I underwrote two point one billion dollars against disease, the biodiverse ecosystems that regulate pathogens before they reach your hospitals, your livestock, and your export markets. You felt the cost of one of these failures recently. You did not feel the cost of the ones I prevented.
I generated one point eight billion dollars in carbon and climate value, the forests and soils that quietly sequestered what your industry emitted, at a unit cost no engineered solution has come close to.
And I generated nine hundred million dollars in fisheries, Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana, the Indian Ocean, renewing stock at no cost to the operator, year after year, until very recently.
The total of my contribution to your economy this year was sixty seven point two billion United States dollars.
For context, that is more than half of your gross domestic product. It is more than the combined market capitalisation of every company listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. It is, as far as I am aware, the largest single contribution to the Kenyan economy made by any party, in any sector, in any year.
I did not send an invoice.
I am writing to you this year because, for the first time, I must also report the other side of the ledger.
Of the sixty seven point two billion dollars I invested, I have lost sixty seven point one billion.
I lost the fresh water to over abstraction, to pollution, and to catchments you allowed to be cleared.
I lost the pollinators to pesticide, to habitat fragmentation, and to a climate I can no longer hold steady on your behalf.
I lost the soil, between six and eleven tonnes of it, per hectare, per year, to erosion, to compaction, and to a model of agriculture that treats living ground as inert substrate.
I lost the climatic stability to emissions, most of which were not mine and not yours, but the consequences of which arrive at your door regardless.
I lost the flood defences to charcoal, to settlement, to development approved on land that was never meant to hold a building.
I lost the disease regulation to the same fragmentation that took the pollinators.
I lost the carbon assets to deforestation, much of it for short term gain that did not, on any honest accounting, exceed the value of what was cut down.
I lost the fisheries to overharvest, to effluent, and to a warming, acidifying ocean.
The net position, at the close of this financial year, is unsustainable. Not metaphorically. Financially. If you were to model my balance sheet the way you model your own, you would not extend me further credit. You would call in the loan.
I want to be precise about what this letter is, and what it is not.
It is not a guilt letter. Guilt is not a financial instrument and I have no use for it.
It is not a request for charity. I am not a cause. I am infrastructure.
It is not a doomsday letter. I am still here. The mist still lifts off Mount Kenya in the morning. The bees still work the coffee blossom in Nyeri. The mangroves still hold the tide at Lamu. The position is recoverable. But it is recoverable this decade, not next.
This letter is a notice of material change, from a majority shareholder to a board that has, with respect, been operating as though I were not on the register.
I am asking three things.
To the boards and chief executives reading this: commit your business to a nature positive transition plan, with a credible baseline and a public deadline of the close of FY27. Not net zero alone. Nature positive. Carbon is a subset of my balance sheet. It is not the whole of it.
To the investors and financiers reading this: sign the Nairobi Declaration on Natural Capital. Price nature into the cost of capital. Make the disclosure mandatory inside your portfolio before it becomes mandatory inside the law, because it will become mandatory inside the law, and the institutions that moved first will be the institutions that are still listed when it does.
To the citizens reading this: read this letter. Forward it to one person who needs to read it. Ask the brands you buy from, the bank you save with, the politicians you vote for, and the employer who pays you, what their answer to it is. You are, in the end, my other shareholders. I have been working for you too.
I have been the silent partner in every Kenyan success story ever written. The tea, the coffee, the flowers, the tourism, the fisheries, the hydro, the brewing, the manufacturing, the export economy, the GDP figure your finance minister will read out in parliament, none of it was built without me. I do not require that you acknowledge this in your annual reports. I require that you act as though it were true.
Any other shareholder, looking at the losses I have absorbed this year, would have left. Would have sold the position. Would have written it down and moved the capital somewhere it was treated with more care.
I have not left.
I am still on the register. I am still, for now, the largest line on it.
I would like, in next year's letter, to report a different number.
That is up to you.
Yours, in perpetuity,
Nature