In June 1975, Kenya’s former president Daniel arap Moi, who was then the vice president, officiated at the opening of Rift Valley Textiles (Rivatex).

Built using loans from the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation, a government agency established to promote projects that create wealth and jobs for Kenyans, Rivatex employed 400 people and was the first Kenyan textile firm to install computerised mills imported from the US. It declared profits in its first three years of operation.

Its dream of becoming one of the country’s nine major textile mills that would supply fabric and clothing both locally and to the region started fading with mismanagement.

On May 25, 1998, Rivatex was placed under receivership. The receiver managers took charge three days later. The firm eventually closed its doors in 2000.

Operations resumed after the company was taken over by the Moi University Research Centre from 2007, and changed its name to Rivatex East Africa. The firm, which serves as a demonstration facility for students at the university also manufactures and supplies textile products across East Africa.

It receives government support through budgetary allocations.

Last year, parliament approved $5 million from the Ministry of Industrialisation and Enterprise Development to fund Rivatex’s purchase of equipment.

Rivatex East Africa managing director Thomas Kipkurgat said that the expansion strategy will see the firm employ a further 2,000 people across the country.

“We have acquired acres of land across the country in a bid to grow more cotton to support our expansion drive,” said Mr Kipkurgat.

Rivatex said it had acquired more than 50,000 acres of land in Mwingi, in Eastern Kenya, and a combined 1,100 acres in the Kerio Valley and Mogotio, in the Rift Valley.

Maureen Kironi, a research officer at the firm said that at its peak, the factory consumed more than 3,000 tonnes of cotton in a year.

“Those were boom years for farmers as the demand from the likes of Rivatex and Kisumu Cotton Mills (Kicomi) ensured the western belt lands were thickly covered with cotton; suppliers would book for deliveries days in advance,” said Ms Kironi.

In December, the Indian government pledged to invest more that $40 million in Rivatex but on condition that Western and Nyanza farmers returned to cotton farming.
The World Bank last month also pledged to give the university $60 million for a facelift.

Rivatex won the grant from the World Bank because of its Tami dye, extracted from the Mexican marigold weed using a process invented by Moi University vice-chancellor Prof Richard Mibey in 2008. The invention is patented to the university and is being used by Rivatex and other textile factories across the world.

Moi University director of research Simeon Kipkoech Mining’ said that through donor funding, Rivatex will be enabled to buy new machinery.

“The new machinery will introduce new technology that will allow us to enhance our research capabilities,” said Prof Mining’.