• Kenya Wildlife Service wants to build new hotel inside Nairobi National Park
• Nairobi Park is already under pressure from encroachers and surrounding development
The Kenya Wildlife Service wants to build a hotel in the Nairobi National Park. This is a bad idea, especially when Kenya is hosting the Africa Climate Summit.
Firstly, land will be hived off for the hotel next to the East Gate. This will further reduce the size of the park and set a dangerous precedent where other national parks can have chunks excised for 'investment'.
Secondly, KWS is broke and presumably thinks this hotel will solve all its financial problems. That is a big mistake. Government does not have funds and if KWS borrows the funds, its balance sheet will become even more ruinous.
More importantly, KWS does not know how to run a hotel. A key principle with parastatals is that the state should not invest in any sector where the private sector is performing well. There are plenty of good hotels in Nairobi. We don't need another one run by a state organisation with no experience in the hospitality industry. In any case, there are already tented camps inside Nairobi park. A new concrete hotel is unnecessary.
So a KWS hotel inside Nairobi National Park will just lose money and cause environmental damage to a very precious natural asset.
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Muammar Gaddafi
The Libyan army officer came to power on September 1, 1969