Thika Road Ads: Firms never waste a good crisis
Xn Iraki
By
XN Iraki
| Apr 15, 2026
We hate traffic jams; they waste our time and make us angry and frustrated.
They also waste our fuel. Any automobile engineer will confirm that cars consume more fuel at lower gears.
I, too, know that after my stint at a technical school when I was younger and more innocent. The school is now a national polytechnic, next to an oddly named town, En, in Upper Kabete.
Traffic jams are a good crisis for others. One is hawkers on Mombasa and Thika roads; they are out as early as 6 am.
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They must hate the building of the Nairobi Expressway! Check what they sell; it‘s very much in tune with the market.
The other group are marketers, specifically advertisers. Next time you are in a traffic jam on the Thika Superhighway, just past Utalii Hotel, check the forest of big billboards on either side of the road.
They are so strategically located that you can’t fail to see them, and you have time to see them!
This observation could make one think the choke point at Pangani (our Strait of Hormuz) was deliberately designed.
Hopefully, as Kiambu Road is dualled and Thika Road becomes an expressway, our “Strait of Hormuz” will be removed or redesigned.
It was Winston Churchill who suggested we should never waste a good crisis. Hawkers and marketers have taken that to the letter. We can add Safaricom and Airtel indirectly; we make lots of calls in traffic jams.
Politicians are the best heirs to Churchill’s advice. Remember instant fines? Nairobi city and the national government cooperation?
Remember Gumo, the leader of the city commission in the Moi era? Remember the reduced online freedom after the 2024 Gen Z protests?
Another classic case of never wasting a good crisis was our lawyers in the 2010 constitution. They made sure the constitution was made in their image, with enough jobs for them. The rest of us became mere spectators.
Astute entrepreneurs, like politicians, never waste a good crisis. Have you noted how umbrellas come out of nowhere when it rains?
Do the corrupt also never waste a good crisis? Have you wasted a good crisis or taken full advantage of it?