Voi town comes of age

Being the largest town in Taita-Taveta County, Voi is slowly emerging as a development hub whose potential is slowly being realised. PASCAL MWANDAMBO explores the opportunities

Due to its vast potential, Voi town may be mistaken as the commercial hub in Taita Taveta County, but it is not.

The dusty town located in a shallow valley overlooking the picturesque Taita Hills, is a development hub whose potential is slowly being realised.

Voi is the largest town in Taita-Taveta County and is located about 250 kilometres from Mombasa and 350 kilometres from Nairobi.

Voi’s historical and touristic value cannot be gainsaid, and so one might still wonder why the town, which is older than Nairobi, has taken too long to come of age.

Located in the vast Tsavo plains, Voi has largely been a wildlife territory, with game roaming from the Tsavo National Park and moving all over the town as late as the past two decades.

As such, given the vast landmass that Tsavo Park, the largest in the country has taken (the park is 22,000 square kilometres and same size as Israel) there has been little land for expansion. The rest of the land is taken up by private ranches, sisal farms and rocky hills.

Voi property agent Danson Mabruk blames Voi Municipal Council of failing to acquire land for development.

“Much of the land in Voi is in private hands and the rest belongs to the Government. How does the civic body expect to develop and raise revenue without land for expansion?” quips Mabruk.

Fast growing

He adds: “The town is growing fast and the population rising fast leading to high demands for houses. But Voi Municipal Council does not have a housing scheme through which it could have raised revenues.”

In fact, poor planning has remained a major development bottleneck in Voi.

The haphazard construction of buildings in the Central Business District and even the outskirts remains a big headache to developers and planners.

There is no watertight plan for roads, water, sewerage and electricity.

According to former Voi civic leader Rashid Mtwana, the growth of unplanned structures should be controlled before it spills out of control.

 “The mushrooming of informal settlements needs to be put in check if this tourism resort town is to become a darling of the thousands of tourists who visit Tsavo National park every year,” says Mtwana.

The good news is that all is not lost for Voi town. Like a giant that has begun to stir from a wakeless slumber, is growing by leaps and bounds and is one of the most promising business hubs in the Coast.

Ambitious plan

Initially, following the unveiling of the ambitious Vision 2030 development blueprint, there were proposals that Voi be upgraded to a tourism resort city owing to the abundance of wildlife and tourist hotel businesses in the region.

But this was never to be because of the issue of lack of enough land for development.

The mayor, Thomas Mwatela, says Voi has great development potential and will in future rival other tourist business hubs in Coast region such as Mombasa, North and South Coast.

“Despite the fact that Voi lost the opportunity to become a tourism resort city in Vision 2030, there is still the plan to put up an inland container depot in the area, which could spur development and create jobs for youths,” says Mwatela.

The civic leader says factors that boost Voi include easy accessibility through the Mombasa-Nairobi highway and the Mombasa-Kisumu railway line and several airstrips in Tsavo.