Kenya seeks PPP for new Nairobi Airport terminal and runway – perhaps not best policy: part one

Slowly but surely Africa is starting to attract more external investment and management expertise into its airports, despite all the actual and perceived negatives about participating there. Qatar Airways is involved with a new airport in Rwanda, and VINCI has multiple concessions across the Cape Verde archipelago. Chinese companies are thereabouts, always looking out for the main chance.

In Kenya the state airline tried to take operational control of Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the continent's 11th busiest, in 2022. As the airport is the airline's main base, Kenya Airways must have been concerned that two separate attempts to build a second runway there had floundered, the second one supported by the African Development Bank.

Now the government is seeking partners in a PPP to build both a second runway and a new terminal building. But such a commitment might not be attractive to many potential investors when traffic numbers remain low by international standards, and while concerns about political opaqueness remain.

This is part one of a two-part report.