Who knows where much-hyped Konza technocity went one year later?

Plots in Konza area are now being sold. [PHOTOS: JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

By JACOB NGÉTICH

Nairobi, Kenya: In Michael Mutiso’s land selling office at Malili trading centre hangs two very inviting and colourful big artist’s impression of Konza city. The proposed Konza Tech City along Nairobi-Mombasa highway is also known as “where African silicon savannah begins.”

Not long ago, Konza city was the talk in town and the impressions carried loaded optimism to Mutiso, the man popularly known by nickname of Bopol.

The buzz in the media fraternity and in business circles at the time was all about the Information Communication Technology (ICT) technopolis commonly referred to as Konza City.

Today, the optimism has quickly turned into pessimism and those who invested in the project are not sure the big dream will ever be realised.

A fence surrounds the 5,000-acre piece of land covered by savannah dry grassland with herds of gazelle browsing the overgrown pasture.

Nothing is there to show that the much-hyped modern city will ever materialise apart from a signpost reading “Konza city” and an Administration Police camp.

Modern technology

Modelled along the hi-tech Silicon Valley City in San Francisco Bay Area in North Carolina, Konza City, 64km from Nairobi, was meant to create a hub of modern technology and innovation.

The project was expected to ease the hustle and bustle in the congested and choking Nairobi capital city.

The idea was mooted by the ICT Board’s Business Processing Outsourcing BPO, which launched the project with pomp, colour and fanfare in January last year, at a function officiated by retired President Mwai Kibaki.

The park was to host business process outsourcing (BPO) ventures, shopping malls, hotels, international schools, a science park and health facilities.

But close to four years after the government acquired land at a cost of Sh1billion in Malili Ranch and declared its intention of putting up the City nothing tangible has taken place.

The local community and land speculators received the idea with excitement leading to a booming land transaction business next to the project but they are now a frustrated lot as despair rules at the dusty roadside Malili trading centre.

Mutiso’s once active office is now a quiet place with several closed shops next to it telling the sad story of the fast declining fortunes of the Malili fable.

“I used to have a bench outside my office for customers waiting to be served, everything looked good and the future for everyone here was bright and rosy, as the residents faces exuded optimism,” Mutiso explains ruefully.

Next to Mutiso’s office are Fridah Nzilani and Patricia Nzilani’s shops, which are the only ones still open among fifteen shops on the building.

Patricia has persevered but would have closed her shop several months ago were it not for her husband who works nearby and has insisted that it would be cheaper for them to use the front room as a shop and the rest as a home.

Fridah on the other hand has, however, made up her mind, because she is shopping around for a buyer for her plot so that she can leave Malili.

She settled at the market in 2011 when ‘it was alive’ but she became lonely when other people disappeared after they either relocated their business or closed shop.

“It will be easy for me to sell my plot when I am staying here than when I leave and wait for the brokers to do it for me, every day I hope that God sends me a buyer so that I can use the money start life elsewhere, because this town is dying,” Frida told The Standard On Sunday.

Resigned and frustrated

Her clothes and fabrics business is doing badly because only “a few customers are interested” but even those only pop in merely inquire about the prices before promising to come back soon. They never do.

“Our only remaining neighbour on this block left three weeks ago, the building on the opposite has remained empty from late December when the last businessman left,” said Frida.

Looking resigned and frustrated, she points at the dusty shops with closed doors and adds, “this is a dying town, more people are leaving every day.”

Just a few metres away, Jacinta Katumbi serves her customers food inside an iron sheet-rooftopped makeshift hotel, but also repeatedly complains that her businesses was declining by the day.

Land craze

“From a bale of wheat flour consumed per day, I now only cook three packets per day,” explains Katumbi.

She is also just about to throw in the towel because she cannot keep up with the high cost of living at Malili.

Expressing her challenges, Katumbi points out that if it was not for her daughter who on internship in Machakos and lives there, she would have gone back to Makueni town to find something better to do.

“I buy a 20-litre jerrycan of water for Sh30 and I use 10 such containers per day, thus eating into what is supposed to be my profit,” she laments.

Mutiso, Frida, Patricia and Katumbi all came to Malili at the height of the Malili land craze and the Sh1.2 trillion Konza city park talk.

The story at the time was that, the government-sponsored project, would transform the region into a booming economy.

The government has, however, remained silent since the Jubilee administration took charge and there has been no mention of the project. The ICT hub that was to be one of its kind in the continent under a private-public sector partnership had promised to create 200,000 jobs once operational.

The irony is that joblessness pervades Malili town with the few remaining young men spending their time idling around and chewing miraa (Khat) under tree shades as they wait for some work to crop up. Someday soon.

Stopped construction

“There are no jobs here, the government stopped constructions of all the buildings as they allegedly await to come up with physical plans, so we are very idle and people are leaving the town every day,” said Titus Nduto also resident of Malili.

The land selling craze that peaked before the launch of the project by Kibaki is no more apart from people who bought plots now praying to find buyers at half the price they acquired them.

“A land owner who bought seven acres of land near Mombasa Road for Sh8 million two years ago is now offering it for sale at between Sh2.5 million to Sh3 million.

Mutiso is so worried that property prices are depreciating sharply and believes they will continue to plummet unless new hope is infused into the area.