Stop Wondering If The Money Bought A House Or A Matatu.

Read the stories diaspora Kenyans tell each other. "My heart sinks. There's barely a foundation, or worse, nothing at all." "What I found back home broke my heart." "The project stalls at slab level. The contractor disappears." The Standard ran a piece called "Wakora: how Kenyans con their relatives abroad". A diaspora forum thread documents one developer who allegedly took KES 40 million from one client and KES 15 million from another, with houses still unfinished. Willstone Homes left 14 buyers waiting six years for houses that were never built.

The pattern is the same. Money goes out. Photos come back. Family members on the ground are well-meaning but biased — or worse, conflicted. By the time you fly home, the money is gone and the build is far behind. Most diaspora builders rely on "random fundis" with no checked portfolio, no written contract, and drip-funding that creates shortcuts and substandard materials.

JengaTrust changes one thing: who decides whether a milestone is actually done. Your money sits in escrow under our control, not your contractor's. When a milestone is supposedly complete, an independent verifier — vetted by us, not chosen by your contractor — goes to the site. They capture proof that's hard to fake: a 3D scan of the actual structure, satellite-grounded location data, and a timestamp tied to a specific device. Funds only release once we have it. If you'd rather pay the hardware store directly so the money has to buy materials, we can route it that way too.