Let's make Nairobi Africa's cultural, intellectual Mecca

Muslims perform the Eid al-Adha morning prayer around the Kaaba, Islam's holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca, on the first day of the holiday marking the end of the hajj pilgrimage, on June 16, 2024. [AFP]

Officialdom in Kenya has been celebrating planned relocation of three United Nation (UN) organisations – UNICEF, UNFPA, and UN Women – to Nairobi by 2026. This will have Nairobi join New York, Geneva and Vienna as the only cities hosting multiple UN agencies.

However, few people have paused to consider whether Nairobi will truly aspire to be a world class city that attracts talent from all over the world – like Geneva, New York, and Vienna do – and not just overpaid migrant workers from high-income countries (aka expats).

It would be a shame if expansion of the UN’s presence in Nairobi resulted merely in creation of a bigger expat bubble that remains only minimally plugged into the local economic, cultural and social scenes.

The government must end the idea that Gigiri can only ever exist as an enclave that must be protected from the rest of Nairobi.

To ensure this does not happen is by making Nairobi eminently livable for Kenyans and other Africans.

Nairobians (and other Kenyans and Africans living in the city) also deserve the paved sidewalks, the green spaces, the security, the good roads, and other infrastructural amenities that officialdom inexplicably believes ought to be reserved for expats.

Which is to say the way the government should think about the UN expansion into Nairobi must not be to rush to build dedicated infrastructure for Gigiri, but to think a general uplift of the entire city. To be clear, this is something we should have done a long time ago.

We should have a livable city because we deserve and love to have nice things. Period. However, it is also the case that policymakers need nudges – which in this case is the UN relocations.

Beyond just infrastructure for all, the government should also do its utmost to create the socio-political space for a flourishing intra-African mobility through Nairobi. Nairobi’s status as a global diplomatic must not be cultivated exclusively for expats from high-income countries.

Instead, it must be squarely focused on making Nairobi into the pre-eminent hub of African commercial, cultural, and intellectual life.

Charity begins at home. From Senegal to Somalia, South Africa to Morocco, African businesspeople, academics, artists, writers, scientists, and adventurers of all kinds ought to want to live and work in Nairobi. To this end, we should make it easy for Africans to travel and work here.

We should be a refuge for those that want to live their best lives in pursuit of the Pan-African dream. We should be a font of the many new ideas and debates that are much-needed if Africa as a region is to stir from its centuries-long stupor.

To reiterate, the goal should not be to create an enclave in Gigiri that mirrors bits of Geneva, Vienna, and New York.

Instead, we should endeavour to outdo these other UN hubs on livability for all, starting with special attention to our people and our neighbours.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University