Samuel Kamau Macharia’s life has been a fight from the very beginning. He built businesses with his own sweat, only to watch them attacked, seized, and torn away from him. He’s been arrested, dragged through endless court battles, and received countless threats.

Most people would have quit, but not Macharia. Each time he was knocked down, he rose again. When Royal Media was shut down and its equipment confiscated, he started over in 2003. 

Today, Royal Media employs more than a thousand people, and Citizen TV commands more than half the country’s viewership, outshining rivals that were in business even before Macharia was born.

But long before all this, Macharia was just a poor boy from Murang’a. He doesn’t even know when he was born. He says elders told him it must have been sometime between 1942 and 1944. 

His mother died when he was only three and his father was a laborer on European farms, earning two shillings a month to raise four children. The family survived on scraps of milk and cold, bitter ugali after long days picking pyrethrum. 

Before he was even ten, Macharia got separated from his family when their home was burnt down during the colonial fights. For nearly two years he lived like a nomad in Tanzania, herding cattle with Maasai boys and trekking across vast lands. It was only by luck that one day they ended up in Thika, where he finally reunited with his family.

Still, poverty was unrelenting. 

To pay his school fees, his elder sister was married off, and the dowry funded his education. 

Macharia was bright. He skipped grades and by 1958 had completed primary school. But he wasn’t among the ones selected to join high school, so he resorted to become a primary school teacher, earning eighty shillings a month. 

Even then, his dreams were bigger. When he heard of the Tom Mboya airlifts taking young Kenyans to study in America, he knew that was his chance. 

He applied, was accepted, but couldn’t raise the required four thousand shillings. His father sold the family’s only land, and the entire village chipped in to help, but all they managed was twelve hundred. The airlift closed without him.

Still, Macharia would not give up. He had to find another way. He went to an Indian travel agent who helped him with a fake ticket and a borrowed hundred dollars. With that, he secured a U.S. visa. That journey to America would change everything for him, and eventually, for Kenya’s media.

A Hundred-Day Journey to America

When SK Macharia left Kenya for America, he told no one, not even his father. He slipped quietly out of Nairobi with nothing but two suits, a shirt, together with his travel agent. His father believed he was still teaching at school.

On bus, they passed through Kampala just as Uganda prepared for independence, then crossed the Nile on rafts of tied logs. From there, they trekked for days until they reached Juba, where they slept on bare floors, surviving on dry bread and beans washed down with water.

Then came the desert. Six buses carried them into the Sahara, and the journey dragged on for forty-five days. Sandstorms buried the vehicles, forcing them to halt for days. Heat scorched them by day and fear suffocated them by night. Macharia was certain he would die there. 

But somehow, they emerged alive, stepping out of the desert into Benghazi, gaunt, shaken, but still with hope of reaching their destination. From Libya, he boarded a ship across the Mediterranean, then took a plane from London to New York.

Lost in America

New York overwhelmed him. The summer heat pressed down, the airport buzzed with strange customs. For the first time, he saw people kissing openly. He thought they were eating each other. But wonder quickly turned to despair. Seattle, his college destination, was thousands of miles away, and he had no penny on him.

A policeman found him wandering the airport, checked his admission papers, and faced a choice: deport him or help him. The officer chose mercy. He arranged a ten-day bus ride across America, with food included. It was Macharia’s second great crossing, ten nights rolling westward, until he finally arrived in Seattle.

But the troubles were not over. His host family had separated and the calls he made went unanswered. He spent weeks sleeping at the bus station until the wife of the host family finally appeared, dropped him in an abandoned house, made arrangements for his food, and went away. 

Winter came, bitter and merciless. With only bedsheets for warmth, he could have frozen to death were it not for the priest in a nearby church who rescued him. Soon after, a Black American couple offered to live with him in their home. They would become his family for the next eight years.

Building a Life

Macharia worked by night and studied by day. He paid his tuition, sent money home for his sister’s school fees, and slowly carved out a life. He moved from technical college to political science, then to accounting. He pushed further, earning a master’s degree and completing CPA exams.

Not every chapter was grim though. Once, he and friends hired a car for a road trip to Oregon, only for it to break down. They abandoned it, thinking no one would trace them. 

They were wrong. Hauled to court on car theft charges, they mischievously requested a Kikuyu interpreter knowing very well that would be hard to find. They were right, none could be found and the judge dismissed the case.

In 1969, as he finished his studies, a Kenyan government team arrived recruiting students to return home to work in several sectors. Macharia was selected. A year later, he flew back to Kenya, no longer the poor boy who had once wandered lost in the bush, but a man hardened by deserts, winters, and near-death trials, carrying with him the education and a dream.

Early Experiments in Work and Business

In 1970, Macharia joined the civil service as part of a group of Kenyans recruited to replace European financial officers. For him, it was good money and he even bought himself a new car. 

But when he was posted to Kakamega, he hesitated. Having just come back from America, he couldn’t imagine living there. At first, he flatly refused to go, but when disciplinary action loomed, he packed his bags and drove to Kakamega. He didn’t last long. The thunderstorms unnerved him, the environment felt alien, and within nine months he resigned.

That brief stint was enough to confirm one thing: the civil service was not for him. He soon found a job at Kenya Industrial Estates, where he finally had a taste of enterprise. There, he helped small-scale industries access loans and grow. 

Outside his official work, he rallied friends and former students from America to start ventures together. Their first was Ngwataniro Enterprises, a clothes peg factory. They also launched a restaurant along Enterprise Road and later a carbon paper company under Crescent Investments. Some ideas failed, others worked, but each business gave Macharia the hard lessons about entrepreneurship. 

He also tried his hand in private business. His first attempt was a matatu between Thika and Ndakaini, but after two accidents in two weeks, he abandoned it. He met a few partners, pooled their resources together and started Tina’s Bar and Restaurant in Nairobi, which thrived for a while. That was where he first met Daniel Arap Moi, long before Moi became president. 

But when they opened a second bar in Lang’ata, things turned sour. The place became a hangout for rowdy soldiers who scared away customers, and profits from Tina’s were drained to cover losses. Eventually, Macharia and his partners walked away before they could drown completely.

The Birth of Madhupaper Company

The big leap came when he traveled to Italy and stumbled upon a family making tissue paper by hand from waste paper. Back in Kenya, he discovered that toilet paper was entirely imported from the UK. He knew the opportunity was massive, but setting up a factory would cost five million shillings, far above what Kenya Industrial Estates could finance.

Armed with a feasibility study, Macharia went to National Bank of Kenya. At first his application stalled, until his old acquaintance Stanley Githunguri was transferred to the bank as General Manager. Within days, the loan was approved, and Macharia had the backing he needed. He quickly secured land in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, imported machines from Italy, and in 1977 production began.

By 1981, Madhupaper International was thriving. It ran day and night with three hundred workers producing tissue and wrapping paper. Its flagship product, Rosy, became a household name across East Africa. For a boy who had no education by age 9 and herded cattle as a nomad, this was a staggering achievement.

The Billion-Shilling Dream

With Rosy’s success, Macharia dared to dream even bigger. He envisioned a paper mill in Thika rivaling Pan African Paper Mills. The project would cost one billion shillings, an almost unthinkable sum in the early 1980s. 

Yet after a detailed feasibility study, the International Finance Corporation agreed to fund it. Six financiers, both international and local, came together. The government threw its weight behind him. Land was set aside, tree licenses granted, and even Finance Minister George Saitoti confirmed approval.

In 1981, during the official opening of Madhupaper, President Moi himself was present and he praised Macharia, famously saying: 

“If I had ten Macharias, this country would have developed.” 

That statement fueled Macharia’s belief that he was destined to transform Kenya’s industrial landscape.

But politics has a way of undoing dreams. Word reached Moi that the one billion shilling financing deal wasn’t really for a paper project but to fund a coup against his government. Doubt spread. Pandemonium arose.

The President called a cabinet meeting, and soon after, the entire project was halted. MPs from Central Province begged him to reconsider, and the financiers tried to salvage the deal, but it was too late.

What began as a spark in a small Italian cottage had grown into Kenya’s largest tissue company, and for a brief moment, it was on the brink of becoming a continental paper giant. But the dream was cut short.

Allies Turn Adversaries

Madhupaper had secured financing from the International Finance Corporation and other lenders, but the Kenyan government wanted the deals dead. The simplest way was to call in Madhupaper’s debts. Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), a state-owned lender, was ordered to demand immediate repayment.

Years earlier, KCB’s chairman had toured the factory and persuaded Macharia to move his accounts there, even funding land for staff housing at a cost of Ksh 53 million. That trust now became the weapon against him.

On 25 October 1985, KCB officials stormed Madhupaper’s offices with accountants from Peat Marwick accounting firm. They demanded instant repayment, refused to accept money, and pushed the company into receivership. Macharia lost everything overnight. His office, his car, even the ability to pay his children’s school fees. Gone.

Desperate, Macharia drove to President Moi’s home at dawn and sat by the roadside until the convoy appeared. When Moi finally stopped, Macharia told him he had been misled: ministers had convinced him that Madhupaper’s funding was meant to overthrow the government.

“I did not come to ask you to reverse your decision,” Macharia said. “I only want you to know the truth. And when you are gone, the things you stopped me from doing — I will do them.”

He was fearless. He didn’t care. Nothing else mattered at that moment. 

Let's Tango With the Courts

Macharia sued everyone involved in the undoing of his business. Madhupaper had binding contracts : 200 acres of land in Thika, deposits on 50,000 acres for tree nurseries, machinery orders, and approvals from multiple ministries. He sought Ksh 1 billion in damages and fought KCB to lift the receivership.

Three years later, Moi called. The Madhupaper dispute was embarrassing Kenya in front of the World Bank. The financiers wanted the Kenyan government to settle the matter  before it could lend it any money. A deal was struck: Macharia would pay Ksh 54 million, withdraw lawsuits, and regain Madhupaper. He complied.

But within a week, Moi ordered the receivers reinstated and the Ksh 54 million returned.

KCB then demanded Ksh 110 million to block the sale of Madhupaper to Ravi Investments, an opportunistic buyer who had learned that Macharia’s business was under receivership. With local banks blocked by the state against lending Macharia any money, he had to look overseas. Luckily, he was able to secure a loan from Barclays in the UK. Still, he was forced to pay Ravi Ksh 14 million for their failed takeover attempt.

Just as he prepared to retake the factory, Moi’s men appeared with orders to seize it again. His lawyer had to tell him the bitter truth: “The government will never let you set foot in Madhupaper.”

Macharia was left with a crushing Ksh 110 million debt. 

Later, he was coerced by the government into selling Madhupaper for Ksh 250 million, though the World Bank had valued it at Ksh 750 million. He received only Ksh 70 million and in fact most of it was swallowed by legal battles.

A nine-year dream, built from 1976 to 1985, was stolen from right under his nose.

Macharia never stopped fighting. In 1992 he sued Kenya Commercial Bank and its affiliates, accusing them of unfair dealings. Eleven years later, Justice Richard Kuloba ruled in his favor, confirming that he had been forced to pay far beyond what he owed. 

But in 2008 the Court of Appeal overturned the ruling and even ordered him to pay the legal costs of his perpetrators. At this point his wife Purity broke down and cried, she couldn’t believe they had lost such a straight-forward case

Royal Credit: A New Beginning

With Madhupaper gone, Macharia sought a business with no physical assets to seize. He envisioned a hire-purchase system, but while doing his research, he stumbled upon credit cards. 

Since his passport had been confiscated, he asked his wife to fly to London to study the trade they were to venture into. Like a sponge, she absorbed all she could about the American Express and soon returned home with the blueprint. They had all the knowledge they needed to get started.

Standard Chartered, once barred from lending to him, now offered financing. And so Royal Credit was born. Competing only with one other business in the field, Diners Club, the company thrived. 

Within six years it launched an international card, gained 13,000 cardholders, and by 1997 ran a Ksh 100 million overdraft with Standard Chartered.

Sensing his presence again, in 1999, President Moi pressured Kenya Power and Lighting Company to force Macharia's bank to cut ties with Royal Credit. Standard Chartered’s London office intervened to keep the account, but the overdraft was still withdrawn. Without liquidity, Royal Credit collapsed as merchants pulled out.

Macharia sued again, armed with correspondence proving political interference, but the case was never heard. He admitted he no longer expected justice from Kenyan courts but he only went there to make noise, force headlines, and keep the story alive.

Even in loss, Macharia never soured. When a straightforward Ksh 56 million case slipped away and his wife broke down, he comforted her saying: “If we lose one million, we’ll find another somewhere else.”

The Messy Birth of Royal Media

Frustrated by how KBC sidelined opposition adverts during the 1992 elections, Macharia vowed to create an alternative. He toyed with the idea of starting a broadcasting company and even went to the Ministry of Information and Communications to ask for a broadcast license. 

But they refused him. He sued the ministry but the minister in charge of communications said they didn't have available frequencies. Macharia didn't believe any of that, so he flew to Geneva to obtain Kenya’s unused frequency records from the International Telecommunication Union.

Armed with evidence, he forced the courts to back him. By 1997, after four years of battle, he finally secured his licence.

In March 1999, Citizen Radio and TV went live.

Shutdowns and Defiance

At first, Macharia and Moi were cordial. But after a hotel party aired live on Citizen during New Year’s Eve 2000, Moi’s men cooked up some propaganda which led to the shutdown of the stations. Because Royal Media rented transmitters from KBC and Telkom, closure was swift and ruthless.

Citizen returned in 2001 with transmitters donated by Voice of America — but its defiance angered Moi again. Twice more police raided, destroyed equipment, and shut it down. But this time, public pressure and US intervention eventually forced the government to allow Citizen back on air.

Real change came in 2003 with a new government. Royal Media finally secured national licences. 

From just a staff of 24, the company grew to over 1,000 employees, with one dominant TV station, and thirteen radio stations.

Macharia installed the necessary hardware and software while Purity marketed the business, turning eyeballs into revenue. Without her, he admitted, the company would never have scaled. He says he erected masts on remote hillsides himself, hauling gear for days.

Fierce Competition

But you and I both know how it works: the higher you climb, the more people try to pull you down. By 2004, Royal Media was taking off. The talent was strong, the management knew what it was doing, and the competition wasn’t just tough, it was cutthroat.

One evening, five Citizen Radio employees resigned. All at once. Same day. No notice. They’d been poached by Radio Africa Group.

Macharia was furious. He fired off letters to government ministers, accusing Radio Africa of trying to kill Citizen Radio. He demanded action immediately.

When the government sat on its hands, Macharia decided to act. And here’s where the story gets wild. 

For three days, if you tuned into Kiss 100, Radio Africa’s flagship station, all you heard was vernacular music . No English hits, no shows. Why? Because Macharia had tampered with their signal!

The Communications Commission of Kenya tried to punish him. They shut down Royal Media’s Limuru transmitter. But Macharia stood his ground. And at midnight, under pressure, the regulator backed down and quietly switched his signal back on.

That’s Macharia in a nutshell. Fight him, and he fights back harder.

Building for the Future

SK Macharia has never built Royal Media to be a vanity project. His real dream? To see it outlive him. He often says: 

“I don’t want people to only see me when they look at Royal Media . I want them to see an institution bigger than any one man.”

That’s why, even as the company grew, his plan was clear. Eventually, he wants Kenyans to buy into it. To make it public. To transform it from a one-man empire into a company owned by the very people it serves.

He’s not just putting up transmitters in the big cities. He’s sending signals all the way into North Eastern Kenya; Garissa, Mandera, Wajir. Places where he knows, very well, the return on investment will not come fast, if ever. But for him, broadcasting is not just about profit, it is about nation-building.

And Macharia’s vision isn’t confined to Kenya. He is already looking at Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, even Burundi ,  imagining Royal Media as a regional powerhouse. 

Macharia believes media can change how Kenyans live. That’s why he put transmitters in North Eastern even though he knew they wouldn’t make money. If people could get news in their own language, he thought, maybe tension would ease. Maybe even the long-running cattle raids between communities like the Pokot and Turkana would slow down.

And the entrepreneurial fire didn’t stop with him. His children also ventured out. Two of them launched Mobile Planet, a tech platform that powered SMS solutions for Safaricom and Airtel. In the 2002 and 2007 elections, their system delivered real-time results straight to Kenyans’ phones. Google was so impressed it bought a 12.5% stake in the company.

Over his lifetime, he’s launched at least a dozen companies. Some thrive, some crash, but he always comes back swinging.

SK Macharia’s Tips for Entrepreneurs

If there’s anything to take from SK Macharia’s life, work ethic, and businesses, it’s this:

1. When you crash, pivot faster. SK Macharia started around 6 companies that failed before he pivoted and poured into Royal Media. Don’t let a big loss be the end of your story. His willingness to leap into a completely different industry (media, of all things) shows that smart pivots after failure can lead to even bigger wins because the lessons learnt in the earlier ventures will help you build even faster.

2. Invest ruthlessly in your own skill and grind like crazy. He worked two full shifts plus night classes in the U.S. to earn multiple degrees. He used what he learned to challenge Kenya’s media status quo. He also climbed mountains to install transmitters.

3. Expand your market, and fast, especially the untapped. Macharia realized big-city, English-language media were saturated, so he spoke the language of millions others that were being left out. Find the “vernacular” of your market and make it your stronghold. Rather than mimicking Nairobi elites, Macharia went straight for the overlooked Kenyan: the rural and vernacular-speaking majority. He built 11 vernacular stations. This wasn’t a nice-to-have — it was a lethal strategy. It let him capture audiences that City-based networks ignored. And that built loyalty and trust to the extent that Royal media radio stations have a collective listenership of over 40%, and the remaining 290 stations get to fight over the 50% or so. That is craaazy.

4. Create opportunities when others won’t give you one. Macharia resolved to launch his own media outfit after one refusal by KBC to air his adverts. if incumbents refuse you access, find a workaround or build your own platform. Just be prepared to fight tooth-and-nail.

5. When you find an opening, go all-in and dominate it. Macharia recognized fragmentation in Kenya’s media (lots of FM’s, new channels) and ran hard to grab share. He didn’t nibble at niche; he swallowed it — forcing rivals to fight for scraps. For any entrepreneur: once you’ve carved out an underserved niche, invest relentlessly to own it before anyone else does.

6. Relentless resilience is non-negotiable. SK didn’t know how to “Give up” When RMS stations were forcibly shut and even vandalized by paramilitary police in 2001 he didn’t sell out or run — he relaunched just ahead of the 2002 elections. When courts went against him he fought up to the Supreme Court. Resilience isn’t optional

7. Use the courts as weapons. Macharia turned bureaucracy into a battleground. When the authorities in the 1990s ignored RMS’s applications, he sued them until court orders forced their hand. As he later explained, a 1995 judgment “ordered the Government to issue RMS with frequencies” — and when officials balked, he even sought to jail the Information Minister for contempt

8. Young people must actively decide who goes into leadership since a good political environment allows freedom to work and grow.