Tabitha Mukami Muigai Karanja, MBS is the current Senator for Nakuru County. She is an established businesswoman, entrepreneur and an industrialist. She founded Keroche Breweries, where she is the Chief Executive Officer. Keroche Breweries is a large brewery in Kenya owned by a non-multinational company accounting for 20% of Kenya’s beer consumption, as of October 2012. Senator Tabitha was born near Kijabe, in Central Kenya in the year 1964. After attending Kenyan schools, she joined the University of Nairobi where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Management, and Operations. She took up employment in the Ministry of Tourism as an Accounting Clerk. She met and married her husband, who owned a successful hardware store in Naivasha town. In 1997, the couple closed the hardware store and went into the wine-making business. Beginning in 1997, Tabitha Karanja and her husband, started making fortified wine, targeting the lower end of the market. In 2007, when the government enacted heavy taxes on locally made wines, her product was priced out of the market.
She switched to manufacturing ready-to-drink gin and vodka, which her state-of-the-art factory still makes today. In 2008, she added beer to her repertoire of alcoholic drinks, beginning with a brand called “Summit”. In 2013, the factory began expansion plans to increase beer production from 60,000 bottles per day to 600,000 bottles per day. The refurbished plant, which cost KSh5 billion (US$55.5 million), was commissioned by Aden Mohammed, the Cabinet Secretary for Industrialization, on 31 March 2015.
Senator Karanja is a passionate women’s rights activist. This is evident in business as she entered and conquered an industry that has been dominated by men for decades. In 2010, then-Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki gave Tabitha Karanja the most noteworthy accolade in Kenya—the Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear (MBS) Award. This was made in recognition of the substantial contributions she has made in liberating the Kenyan liquor industry from the monopoly previously held by multinationals.
