Nduati, a veteran journalist who had moved to Citizen Radio from the Nation group of newspapers, was shot dead by two gunmen in the entrance to his home in Nairobi. Nduati was watching television with his family when they heard a disturbance at the front door. When his wife went to investigate, two armed men ordered her back into the house. Nduati was shot in the chest when he came out to find his wife. He died on the spot.
The intruders stole money, a television, a VCR, stereo equipment, and some clothes. Police classified the crime as a robbery that ended in murder, but local journalists suspected the slaying could have been connected to Kenya’s volatile coffee industry.
Nduati, an experienced business editor, had covered corruption scandals at the Coffee Board of Kenya, a government monopoly that buys the entire coffee harvest from Kenyan farmers and then markets it to the world. Disputes over control of the coffee industry have turned violent in recent years, with at least one head of a coffee cooperative dying under mysterious circumstances.