A Storytelling Drive for Enhanced Infrastructure and Economic Services in Kenya

Take care and hold your purse or smartphone tight and close to your chest with the car windows rolled up way beyond the mid-way range. You can do without free air circulation for a while if only to avoid the pouncing experts who will snatch your valuables and vanish in seconds.

Deception also reigns in the seemingly decent gated communities as water shortage bites every week. In the slum, water may be available throughout from vendors but at a unit cost higher than the price paid by the gated communities. In other words, there is no clear winner in the city as the majority complain and have their say at best, but the cartels still have their way.

Drive northwards. Enjoy the smooth descent a few metres from the gated communities along the newly constructed road cutting through a densely populated informal settlement, a byword for the bad taste of unplanned city growth in Kenya.  As you drive uphill towards the major road connecting to the city centre, the sight of the vast shanties is jaw-dropping, no less the foul smell the winds may at times be unkind enough to blow your way.

Now, take a right turn. The sight of the decent gated communities fades in the rear-view mirror. If the sun is up, it may glint off sparkling scenes from the shanties in the expansive slum. The sparkle is, however, deceptive. It has nothing to do with the quality of life here but rather a few of the upcoming shanties that have been lucky enough to escape walls and roofs of rusty and recycled iron sheets and take pride in a few new sheets. Deception also reigns in the seemingly decent gated communities as water shortage bites every week. In the slum, water may be available throughout from vendors but at a unit cost higher than the price paid by the gated communities. In other words, there is no clear winner in the city as the majority complain and have their say at best, but the cartels still have their way.

About seven minutes gone by and you are now heading straight into the heart of the city, which has rightly earned the name “Nairobbery” in recent years. This name has been acclaimed as a fitting and timely baptism. Take care and hold your purse or smartphone tight and close to your chest with the car windows rolled up way beyond the mid-way range. You can do without free air circulation for a while if only to avoid the pouncing experts who will snatch your valuables and vanish in seconds. They are masters at distracting you with funny scenes and noisy drama.

If you are lucky enough to escape traffic jams, then in less than ten minutes you will be crossing the highway through the city. The freedom that the highway’s name features does not make it free of traffic, thieves, or snatchers. The newly constructed Express Way overhead leaves no doubt that the race for big infrastructure projects made of concrete is the new game fronting new winners. Ironically, water supply is far from guaranteed in the city and the estates in the metropolitan area.  

It may be hard to have even a glimpse of the green park that used to be openly in sight years ago. What was once a green city with several open spaces has acquired a completely new look with tall buildings competing for the sky. Greening and the conservation agenda have been relegated to the back seat. What became of Wangari Maathai’s dream, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the Greenbelt Movement?  

Count the loss, enjoy the melodrama, recover, and heed their request next time.

Take a look! The public roadside parking spaces are full to capacity. Heading for private parking spaces and paying more for the service is the better option, coming with the benefits of being sure that your car will be safer. The public roadside parking is exploited by cartels through proxies who are mean-looking young men. They will request to guard your car at a “small guarding fee”, over and above the normal parking fee paid to the city county. Avoid them at your own risk then come back only to find the side mirrors of the car gone, the sweet revenge and justification they use to stress to you why you needed to pay the guarding fee for them to take charge. The sad part is that they are the ones who have stolen those mirrors, directly or indirectly through their tightly meshed network. Again, they will readily sell you a replacement, which may be the very item they stole from your car – with a few modifications if necessary to disguise them. Count the loss, enjoy the melodrama, recover, and heed their request next time.

Reaching the private parking spaces in the city can be a breath-taking feat as you snake your way through the heavy city traffic. This test is not for the faint-hearted or learners, but for seasoned drivers and daring adventurers. Even for the old hands, it is still a tough and unforgettable challenge.  The joy of driving own car vanishes into thin air. Taking Uber taxi from the estate to the city makes more sense, doesn’t it?

From this experience, one readily understands why buying and driving a car to the city has lost its former glory. It is time to embrace the sharing economy model, a hallmark of the digital economy. Shared taxis and public transport are the way to go. Mass transit solutions, trains being key, are no longer options but a necessity for the growing urban populations with skilled workers, who make lost time more and more expensive per capita.

Good examples matter as it is not all doom and gloom. How the standard gauge railway (SGR) transport has improved the travel times as well as the volumes (passenger-kilometres) and quality of the ride between Nairobi and Mombasa is a ready testament to the transformative role of efficient transport and logistics in a nation. A journey by road from Voi to Nairobi, some 320 kilometres, averages six hours, several inconveniences and risks aside. The express train using the SGR completes the same journey in less than four hours (3h 48 min). Businesspeople and tourists find this an intriguing change. The saving in time and the convenient assurance of punctuality has made it much easier for skilled and knowledge workers with their families in the capital, where most skilled workers converge, to go and work in Voi. A good example is at Taita Taveta University (TTU), the only university located in Voi. Recent calculations have shown that compared to driving, mostly alone in the car, using the train yields direct savings and indirect savings related to opportunity costs for a skilled worker and consultant. The total savings per worker of this caliber runs into US$ 50,000 in a year. Let’s advance mass transit solutions and take up shared spaces as the digital economy facilitates sharing with enhanced transactional integrity and security of operations, shall we?

Can similar encouraging stories be told of the water sector, seeing that even Voi and the institutions therein suffer water shortage? The energy and food sectors also suffer from rising costs and threats to security of supply. If these sectors can start off on a few success stories like the ones gleaned from the transport sector, then the country can take off on a transformative trajectory within a few years. Elected leaders are challenged hereby to be honest and bold enough to confront these pressing challenges and assure citizens that they are committed to steering a genuine transformation.