As the COP-27 climate change conference being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, continues to dominate global headlines, a question that Kenyans should consider is this: Could this conference have been held in Nairobi?
The answer is an unequivocal ‘No’ on many fronts. But most important is that we simply do not have the capacity to host 50,000 visitors over a two-week period.
Very large conferences like the COP-27 can only be held at locations that already have an established hospitality infrastructure which handles very large numbers of tourists. And on such matters, on the African continent it’s really only South Africa and Egypt that have such capacity.
One of the bottlenecks that Nairobi has faced in the past when it comes to hosting of these bigger conferences, is that the hotels in this city are somewhat scattered all around the place. And between these hotels and the Nairobi central business district, where the conference would necessarily be held, would lie a multitude of traffic jams.
Getting to the main conference venue from the many fine hotels on Mombasa Road, for example, would, up to very recently, have been a total nightmare.
So why do I speak of “in the past” and “up to very recently”?
Well, we now have the Nairobi Expressway, often spoken of as a key 'legacy project' of the former President Uhuru Kenyatta, which – in the fullness of time – will be a total game-changer when it comes to such major conferences.
What was once the serene suburb of Westlands, for example, is now a key business district in its own right. And everywhere you look you will see some hotels of the kind we Kenyans call 'tourist class'.
Before the completion of the Nairobi Expressway, it would have been a very poorly organised conference that booked any of its delegates into hotels in Westlands. Such delegates would be doomed to spending roughly one hour on the drive into the CBD, and another hour or more, getting back to their hotel in the evening.
Now conference organisers can comfortably plan for a 10-minute drive either way.
But there is a bigger point here. And this is that these benefits flowing from the Nairobi Expressway were never going to be visible during former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s time in office. The full benefits lie many years ahead.
And while many African presidents dream of vast infrastructural 'legacy projects' that will immortalise their leadership for years to come, in the advanced democracies this is not really an option.
In such nations, it is generally understood that any project that will in some fundamental way move the country forwards, has to be multigenerational in its implementation as much as in its eventual benefits.
Indeed, the only vast national infrastructure project often mentioned as an example from such nations, and associated with one specific leader, is the US Interstate Highway system, initiated by President Dwight Eisenhower way back in 1956.
Otherwise given how long these projects often take to implement (the US Interstate Highway System, for example, took 35 years to complete) it is pointless for just one president or prime minister to want to claim any such project as his or her 'legacy'.
Speaking of projects which take a long time to complete, I still remember how shocked I was about a decade ago, when I first landed at Berlin’s Tegel Airport and found that this airport – supposedly the main airport of that famous city – was very much smaller than other airports I had transited through in Europe.
When I later asked my hosts about this, they told me that there was a new and much bigger airport being built. But its completion was several years behind schedule, which was quite contrary to the German reputation for efficiency, as one of them pointed out laughing.
This bigger and better new airport has since been opened – in 2020 – and is known as the Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
But back to Africa, here it would seem, the lure of the 'legacy project' still persists.
Former President Uhuru Kenyatta, by building the Nairobi Expressway, has laid a foundation for Kenya to host much bigger conferences.
But I doubt if future generations will remember this as part of his legacy.
