New Nairobi Airport PPP terminal confirmed as government investigates ‘status’ of Kenyan airports

A struggle is emerging in East/Central Africa to establish the leading international air hub there.

The contenders are Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where a new airport is planned, Kigali in Rwanda, where one is being built, and Nairobi, where airlines and passengers use a facility that opened in 1978.

Nairobi has been promised a new state of the art terminal before, but hopes came crashing down seven years ago when construction funding could not be found.

Now the Kenya Airports Authority is having another go, on this occasion hoping to secure a PPP agreement involving the private sector; deals that are increasingly common across the globe, but still rare in Africa.

But the very fact that at the same time the government has ordered an enquiry into the status of Kenya's airports, triggered by concerns over wholly inadequate infrastructure, will trigger alarm bells at potential investors.