Is Nairobi’s reign as a regional hub in its final days?

Nairobi, Kenya: Last week, I had an errand to run in Nairobi’s central business district (CBD). What was supposed to be a 30 minute pop-in and pop-out situation took nearly half my day. Two hours after leaving my station on Mombasa Road, less that ten kilometres from the CBD, I was still sweating in traffic, not yet there.

All this was occasioned by a plan to ‘decongest’ the city’s roads, the biggest hallmark being a conspicuous display of concrete-filled yellow and white stripped tanks welded together to look like the narrow entrance into a cattle dip.

Since then I have not thought it wise to venture into the CBD, luckily I don’t have to. Unfortunately, for a lot of other Kenyans they have to endure the journey into the city centre on a daily basis.

Nairobi is well placed as a commercial hub on the African continent. Analysts say the chaos in Egypt convinced investors that matters on the continent could not only be run from Johannesburg, there was Nairobi.

The city has since then become the focus of corporates setting up offices and international hotel chains putting up their properties.

Unluckily for Nairobi, rosy depictions in world wealth and property reports seem to only look at the bigger picture; location and a thriving economy.

Examined on the smaller intricacies of every day life, like getting to work on time to get anything productive done, it is anyone’s bet where Nairobi would be. A 2012 study by IBM Corporation said that Kenya lost Sh50 million every day in traffic jams. The numbers as since quoted have not changed significantly. That is Sh18.2 billion a year.

The Knight Frank Wealth report for 2015 listed Addis Ababa as one of the cities to watch. That looks like a prophetic message to Nairobi if nothing changes.