Elvis has left the IEBC building

Following the dramatic resignation of Commissioner Roselyn Akombe mid last week, the immediate thought that came to mind to summarize the sensational exit was:“Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building. Thank you and goodnight!”

The phrase “Elvis has left the building” was often announced at the end of Elvis Presley’s concerts to encourage rabid fans to accept that there would be no further encores, and that they should pack up and go home. The phrase has morphed from its American pop culture origins into a generally accepted euphemism for someone’s departure, dramatic or otherwise.

On August 14th 2017, shortly after the elections, I opined in this column that the corporate governance structure of Kenyan constitutional commissions and the Interim Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in particular, was a unique mongrelization of the executive and oversight roles of a body corporate. The IEBC Act creates a commission made up of 8 members and a chairperson. The Act also creates the role of a secretary to the commission, who shall be the accounting officer of the institution.

A look at the act makes for fairly interesting reading. At no point is the chairman referred to as an executive chairman, nor are the commissioners defined as executive. This executive role can be viewed as being derived from both Article 88 (4) of the Constitution read together with Section 4 of the IEBC Act which states the role of the commission is to oversee the mandate of providing elections and referendums as well as and determining electoral boundaries in Kenya. Section 5(4) of the IEBC Act then gives the executive power to the commissioners when it states that the chairperson and members of the commission shall perform their functions as provided in the Constitution, and the secretariat shall perform the day to day administrative functions. And just for avoidance of doubt, Section 7 (2) of the IEBC Act, states that the commissioners are expected to serve on a full time basis.

Section 10 creates the role of the secretary to the commission who, under subsection (7) (a),shall be the Chief Executive Officer, under subsection (7) (c) shall be the accounting officer and, most importantly, under subsection (7) (e)(i) shall be responsible for executing the decisions of the commission.

The act thus blesses the CEO with full time commissioners whose decisions he is responsible for executing, while he remains the accounting officer for the financial outcomes of the organization. But the events of last week, following Ms. Akombe’s resignation and the Chairman Chebukati’s stinging indictment of his own commissioners displayed the inherent weaknesses in the mongrel governance structure.

In an ordinary public or private corporate institution, a non-executive board provides oversight and strategic direction to the executive management who undertake the day-to-day operations. By separating the two, it creates a layer of accountability for the executives as well as a point of reference for major decisions that need “independent” eyes to probe the justification and rationale that guided the thinking behind the decision. Equally important, it allows the chief executive a safe landing in the event that external stakeholders question the decision, as the CEO can simply point upwards and say:“the board approved the resolution.” If you need a recent illustration, look no further than the recent case of the Kenya Airways chairman Michael Joseph who vigorously defended the airline’s CEO’s decision to hire five Polish nationals.

However in the case of the IEBC, Chairman Chebukati is, for all intents and purposes, a CEO of an executive team of commissioners who do not have the safety structure of an oversight board to provide strategic guidance and independent thinking that questions those very decisions.

Those decisions must be taken in utmost good faith. Article 250(9) of the Constitution of Kenya states that a member of a commission, or the holder of an independent office, is not liable for anything done in good faith in the performance of a function of office. This is further entrenched in Section 15 of the IEBC Act that provides the same protection from personal liability for commissioners and officers for acts done in good faith. If Ms. Akombe and Mr. Chebukati’s allegations last Wednesday are to be believed, then good faith has also left the building. All the commissioners and the officers of the IEBC must remember that they will be personally liable for any action, claims or demands that may arise in future for decisions taken in bad faith.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Kenya Airways Rises From The Ashes

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]OTP in airline speak means on time performance. Kenya Airways (KQ) has been operating on a fairly good OTP for departures and arrivals over the last 3 months of my frequent regional usage within the East African Community circuit. I mentioned this to the flight purser on my KQ flight from Nairobi to Kigali via Bujumbura a couple of weeks ago. We were chatting while parked on the tarmac on a brief stopover at the dusty pink colored Bujumbura airport. He was amazingly sanguine about KQ’s future, something I had not seen in a long time as I often chat with the staff on the flights who have been typically morose following the poor financial fortunes of the airlines in the recent past. So Juma, as I’ve chosen to call the flight purser for now, explained that the airline has set an OTP target for departure as 15 minutes before the scheduled time so that they can make allowances for delays caused by flight engineering or operations.Out of 8 flights in 4 weeks I only suffered one delay for an Entebbe to Nairobi flight and was informed of the same via a text message as I left for the airport.

Juma mentioned that staff morale is climbing following retrenchments of about 150 last year. Why, I asked? He said that staff were getting incentives for ticket sales, and quite clearly for on board duty free sales given the renewed vigor that I have observed cabin crew flogging those overpriced items lately. “All our pilots are Kenyans,” he said chest bursting with a pride that almost made the buttons of his red blazer pop off as he pointed out another KQ plane that had just landed from Kigali en route to Nairobi via Bujumbura. “Can you see how busy we are, we have two planes on the tarmac of a foreign airport simultaneously!’’

I shared his infectious enthusiasm. KQ had finally reported an operating profit of Kshs 897 million in the financial year ending March 2017. This was compared to the operating loss of Kshs 4 billion the previous financial year. Clearly something had started to fundamentally change in KQ even before the June 2017 appointment of the new Managing Director Sebastian Mikosz, an acclaimed turnaround expert.

Unfortunately for Mr. Mikosz, disgruntled staff leaked a memo last week revealing the appointment of five senior expatriate managers. At a hastily convened press briefing following the contents of the memo’s publication in mainstream media, Mr. Mikosz seemed to be at pains to say how long the 5 managers, all from Poland and former work colleagues of his at his last employer Lot Airlines, would be staying in Kenya. While explaining what looks like an OTP (Only Through Poles) turnaround strategy he told the media that they were initially hired for 3 months. I admire the five senior managers who would quit full time paying jobs at a recently turned around airline in a fast growing European economy to take up a shortterm contract in a piddling, election bickering East African backwater.

In keeping with good corporate governance, his chairman Michael Joseph stepped in to take one for the team. “ I was involved, together with the board, the HR members of the Board, on the decision to support Sebastian in bringing this team here, I personally approved it. It was because those guys, Sebastian knows those guys expertise and that they can hit the ground running. They are not here to take anybody’s jobs; they are here to provide Sebastian with the knowledge and information he needs in order to turn around the airline.”

It’s great that the board chairman (himself a former expatriate – how’s that for visuals?) quickly stepped up to provide much needed support for the managing director on an emotive issue of staff at a national flag carrier. Mr. Mikosz will need a lot of such support especially when some disgruntled staff will continue to use inappropriate means to embarrass him such as leaked memos to the media. There will certainly be significant internal resistance to both him and his “pentagon” as they execute the painful changes that are required to turn around the company. As a rabidly proud Kenyan, I support what the board and management are doing to restore the pride in the Pride of Africa. I do however wish that they would be sensitive to the not so subtle messaging that adopting an “OTP strategy” demonstrates: ‘We couldn’t find other nationals, let alone Kenyans, to do what needs to be done.’

[email protected]: @carolmusyoka[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Governance fights lead to ungovernable behavior

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]“Cabin crew, disarm doors and cross check,”said the Captain of Kenya Airways’ flight KQ444 that had flown from Nairobi, via Bujumbura and landed at Kigali International Airport last Tuesday. The time was 18:36 precisely. Exactly ten amazingly short minutes later I boarded the hotel’s shuttle to begin my ride to Serena Kigali. It had taken about 8 minutes to deplane, walk into a gleaming airport terminal where six immigration counters were fully manned by young, blue suited officers, get mildly grilled as to the purpose of my visit and walk through with my hand luggage straight out of the terminal. To the right of the immigration counters were two E-Gates, where Rwandese nationals could pass through with just their passports and no human intervention.

We drove out of the airport with the twinkling lights of the beautiful city laid out bare in front of the airport gates and straight into the busy but moving vehicular traffic. Having just arrived from the Ghost of Kidero’s Past,the clean streets were a stark reminder of how Nairobi continues to heave under the collective weight of uncollected garbage and unbanked cash collections. There had already been indications of the Rwandese obsession with health when we departed from Bujumbura about an hour before that. The crew had walked through the cabin of the plane releasing insecticide spray that the Rwandan health authorities required for any incoming air traffic to exterminate potentially harmful insects. Not so in Kenya, we welcome you and your frequent flying vermin.

I was in Kigali to attend a training program where the attendees were citizens of the East African Community member states. Tanzanian, Ugandan and Rwandese attendees brought my unceasing wonderment to a crashing halt as they bombarded the Kenyan attendees with questions about our prevailing political situation, particularly about a bold judiciary, an electoral commission in doldrums and two perennial protagonists that were both sure of victory come October 17th 2017. It was apt that the subject matter of the training – corporate governance- was being tested on a daily, if not hourly basis at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission(IEBC) later in the week. As at the time of writing this piece, 5 out of 6 commissioners had issued a press statement disowning a memo allegedly written by the Chairman Wafula Chebukati censuring the Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba on the handling of the elections.

It is curious that the commissioners did not draw any attention as to the veracity of the leaked memo, which the more sober social media pundits had begun to question. In fact they inadvertently affirmed its authenticity by declaring that they had neither discussed nor sanctioned the memo’s contents, which they only learnt about through the media. What the five commissioners clearly demonstrated was that they were only standing behind their leader long enough to throw him under a bus, which is any chairman’s worst nightmare.

Add to that the fact that there is a communication leak of a confidential memo makes for the script of a Kenyan edition of The Poltergeist. It is unfortunate that a governing body like the IEBC’s commissioners has resorted to lifting up its skirts to reveal the family jewels through the media. There can be no winners with media wars.A chairman’s job is fairly difficult and requires high levels of emotional intelligence, diplomatic speak and consensus building amongst the various internal and external stakeholders that a board has to deal with including its own members.
This could only have happened if some of the Commissioners felt that their Chairman was not building consensus and getting the collective view of the Commission as the governing entity before making critical decisions, especially if he is not an Executive Chairman. I doubt that it was the intention of the drafters of the constitution to give executive powers to the IEBC chair by dint of his being the returning officer for presidential elections as provided for in Article 138 (10) of the Constitution of Kenya.

Our constitutional commissions seem to have created a mongrel of a governance framework that creates a blurred line between oversight of the administrative roles played by secretariats and the execution of the mandate for the constitutional commissions which some commissioners actually undertake. The governance incongruence that this electoral crisis has surfaced at the IEBC, which is quite likely replicated at the nine other constitutional commissions, is one that requires some reflection and urgent clarification by lawmakers of the next parliament.
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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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Short Term Leadership Airline Style

Now I may have failed to mention that we were not riding in a devil-sitting-behind-the-wheel-Probox. This was an expensive piece of equipment flown by KQ’s finest, carrying human lives. Meaning that this team of pilots had to work well together, whether they were friends or not. They had to have an unspoken protocol of command that was established the minute they took their respective seats on the flight deck, devoid of ego and showing off who had more flight hours logged under their belts. The Captain was the captain. Period. I sat back and marveled at their professional waltz through the flight, with no raised voices and no hubris inspired instructions. It brought to fore that there are two kinds of leadership styles: command and control on the one hand and collaborate and influence on the other.

Different situations require different leadership styles. Say for example Mary has been promoted to become the head of a division in a manufacturing firm and is now leading what used to be her peers. Trying to command and control such a team will be extremely difficult in light of the fact that some team members may still be bristling at not being the ones to have gotten the promotion themselves. Some team members may have had more years on the job and, therefore, a sense of entitlement and misplaced expectations of respect. Mary has to navigate her leadership journey carefully, as trying to run the team through issuing edicts and driving hard for results may completely backfire on her.She will be better off trying to ensure collaboration within the team and influencing her former peers towards a common goal in order to establish her stamp of authority. Joanne, on the other hand, has just been hired from another firm, to come and head a division whose performance has been dwindling, has low staff morale and has got numerous outstanding audit issues that need to be resolved. Her leadership style in this case might have to first be command and control in order to establish new ground rules and set a certain standard, before moving into a collaborate and influence mindset once the division’s performance has been restored.

I came to learn that the command and control structure actually extends to the whole cabin crew when I spoke to one of the flight attendants. The flight purser and their team of flight attendants were most likely meeting for the first time as well. The flight purser takes charge at the beginning of the flight when they have a team meeting before passengers board. Everyone knows what to do, from simulating the instructions regarding emergency procedures to heating and serving food and drinks. A command and control leadership style is required in highly repetitive, process oriented jobs with multiple team members that may never have worked together, such as a surgical theatre. Order and not hubris is what keeps people alive at the end of the day.

Sights and Sounds of Turkey

A work related trip to Turkey recently got me to make my maiden voyage on Turkish Airlines. The narrow bodied 737-800, with a passenger capacity of anywhere between 151 to 189 passengers depending on its configuration, was packed to the rafters and every single seat was occupied for the six hour flight to Istanbul. The flight left bang on time at 10:25 a.m. filled with a motley group of passengers. Somewhere in the middle sat a group of female Kenyan traders, with the ubiquitous well worn scarf wrapped around seasoned shoulders. At the back of the plane was a group of young Kenyan males, quite obviously going for a sports related trip given the loud, raucous laughter filled with competitive promise that occasionally punctuated the air.

As a card-carrying member of the Kenya Airways (KQ) fan club, I couldn’t help but compare the service on the two airlines. KQ beats them on food hands down despite a Turkish-steward-dressed-in-chef-uniform perambulating about and offering more promise than fact during the flight. However, I have to admit that individual passenger screens providing at least 40 choices in each of the three genres of drama, comedy and action made for an unbeatable in-flight entertainment service.


Image from http://ichef.bbci.co.uk

The Turkish Government owns 49.12% of Turkish Airlines while the rest is free floating on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. With about 277 planes ranging from Airbus, Boeing and Embraer, the profit-making airline is the fourth largest carrier in the world flying to 218 international destinations. It has faced challenges like most airlines and posted losses in 1987 and 1988 due to high payments on its new Airbus A310s. It also suffered in the global aviation crisis following the Gulf War in the nineties and didn’t break even until 1994. The airline also underwent some stress during the SARS outbreak that forced it to suspend flights to several Asian destinations. However in the last three years 2012, 2013 and 2014 the airline turned over $8.2 bn, $9.8 bn and $11 bn respectively yielding a net profit after tax of $657m, $357m and $845m during the same period. It enjoys relatively good profits and very healthy and positive cash flows.

But it’s not difficult to see why. Turkish Airlines is a key partner in the Turkish government’s tourism initiatives, which started when the new government in 1983 chose the airline to be its primary ambassador and committed to maintaining a modern fleet with high security. Data from the Turkish government shows an average growth rate of above 5% in tourism per year with 36.84 million visitors in 2014. Turkey happens to be the sixth most popular tourist destination in the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s ranking. It relies on its cultural and historical heritage along with sea tourism. It has also been helped recently by the depreciation of its local currency – the lira- against the US dollar and Euro which has therefore made it an attractive destination for visitors from those regions.

We landed in Istanbul in the early evening and as I was travelling to Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, I had to go through immigration. Long lines awaited me with about 22 counters reserved for non-Turks and another 8 reserved for Turkish passport holders. I must admit I let out a quiet snort of derision as I gleefully stood in the same tortuous line with British, American and EU passport holders. No privileged access here. We were all in it to win it.


Image from http://www.trazeetravel.com

Istanbul’s Ataturk airport is actually not visitor friendly and it’s quite a schlep to the domestic terminal with poor signage and mostly non-English speaking airport staff. I barely had time to grab something to eat before I heard the last boarding call for my flight to Izmir. As it was a domestic flight I was expecting it to be an Embraer or another Boeing 737 at least. However the transfer bus pulled up in front of a Boeing 777 -300 ER with a passenger capacity of 349. The reason for the use of the wide-bodied equipment quickly became apparent. The 42-minute flight was packed to gunwales to Izmir, a town 331 kilometres south west of Istanbul that sits along the coastline of the Aegean sea. Izmir has a rich history with at least 4000 years of urban civilization and is proximate to the ancient city of Ephesus- remember John the apostle’s letter to the Ephesians? Most of the passengers were tourists, many who were of oriental extraction.

There is newness to Izmir, certainly not the crowded old city feeling that I recall from my Istanbul trip 15 years ago. The streets are wide, 3 lane highways on a each side and my cab driver drove like he was possessed with and conceived by Lucifer’s spawn. Having had a seamless check in process into the hotel and feeling slightly peckish, I took the lift to the 8th floor sky bar and was immediately taken by the wide vista of twinkling lights on the hillsides of Izmir. Immediately below me was a city square, it was 10 pm on a Saturday night and there were many people walking, rollerblading and cycling on a sea fronting promenade, the centre of which is the Republic Square. It looked safe, appealing and attractive as it was brightly lit and secure. On the other side of the square, was a police car parked seemingly carelessly on the road, insouciance oozing out of every screw holding its authority together. Its red and blue lights flashed brilliantly to mark its territory. Republic Square was safe for its users.


Image from http://www.trazeetravel.com

The Turkish government uses the national airline as a fundamental tool of tourism, which is a key economic driver. Security is present and very visible to residents and visitors of Turkish cities. It is apparent even to the untrained eye that the government plays a key and supportive role in the way business is done in the country. More on Turkish government support of Turkish business next week.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Kenya Airways needs another shot in the arm

What do Britam, Kenya Tourism Federation, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Strathmore Business School, MTN Business Kenya, Kenya Commercial Bank and British American Tobacco Kenya Limited all have in common? Absolutely nothing. Except that senior executives from these organizations were present in Kigali last month, more precisely on May 26th for various business reasons that were not only mutually exclusive, but it is quite likely that many of these executives never crossed each other’s paths. But they crossed my path. The serendipitous points of confluence were the Kigali airport and at the Serena Kigali where many of us were staying. Most of the executives had come in using the Pride of Africa, Kenya Airways, which is the lifeblood of business travel in the East, Central and Southern Africa region. A tiny fraction had used Rwandair, the national carrier for that beautiful nation state nestled in the bosom of the East African Community.

There is massive trading of goods and services occurring across the five East African Community members. Pivotal to that business is the travel that the business owners and their managers have to undertake to make that business happen or monitor its performance. Pivotal to that travel is Kenya Airways like the critical aorta in the East African cardiovascular system. It hit me, after saying hello so many times, that I was starting to think I was at a diluted version of the Kenyan Company of the Year Awards. Kenyans are doing business aggressively in the region and any problems facing Kenya Airways are problems that will have far reaching impact on business in the region. Board meetings will be missed, conferences will be delayed, workshops will be remiss without key trainers, performance appraisals postponed just if the airline had one daily hiccup.

So it was with the deepest regret that I told my workshop organizers in April that they had to book me on Rwandair for the May workshop that took me to Kigali. I am proudly Kenyan and fiercely loyal to Kenya Airways, so much so that I take deep umbrage whenever the airline is trashed in any gathering. The golden handcuffs called frequent flyer miles also don’t allow much in the form of adulterous predilections with competitors. You are penalized heavily via ego bruising downgrades by the Flying Blue program, of which Kenya Airways is a member, for not maintaining a rigorous flight schedule annually. I was in the tiny fraction that flew the competition simply because the anecdotal evidence of missed and delayed regional flights by our national pride were starting to take their toll on the brand’s promise of reliability. I ended up being vindicated for my decision as my colleague who chose to fly the airline did indeed have his morning flight to Kigali cancelled. It is also noteworthy that Kenya Airways is the only decently reliable airline flying to Tanzania and Uganda respectively directly from Nairobi. It therefore has a captive market well sewn up in this region.

The airline has monumental goodwill and plays an undeniably enormous role in flying the country’s flag high. As one of only four African national carriers that are of global significance (the other three being South African Airways, Ethiopian Airways and Egypt Air) Kenya Airways’ financial problems are Kenya’s problems. They merit scrutiny and concern in equal measure, if for no other reason than we cannot, as a proud nation, permit this symbol of nationalism to fly into headwinds as my media colleagues like to infer.

In November 2012, I raised an eyebrow in this column regarding the motive for the rights issue that Kenya Airways had undertaken 6 months earlier:

“The timing of the rights issue in April this year was ostensibly to raise the equity for the airline and improve its debt to equity ratios for the further leveraging the airline needs to undertake to grow its fleet for its future expansion. However, looking at the airlines’ statement in changes in equity, if the rights issue had not happened when it did, Kshs 6.2 billion would have been wiped out from the equity arising from the operating losses as well as losses from the cash flow hedges that have caught the airline on the wrong side of the very necessary derivative bet for a few years now.”

Looking at the Half Year 2014 results released by the airline, the total comprehensive loss of Kes 13.2 bn pretty much almost halved their equity to the position of Kes 15 bn from a starting position of Kes 28.2 bn at the beginning of the financial year in April 2014. Cash was down to Kes 4.5 bn at half year as well from Kes 11.2bn at the beginning of the period. The airline is burning through cash at a high rate driven by high loan and interest repayments and basic operational expenses like salaries while grappling with labor relations that are a key cause of the delayed flights across the region.

The recently announced Treasury cash bailout of Kes 4.2 billion will be swallowed within the airline’s operational bowels without the pleasure of a satisfactory burp. That will also be putting an Elastoplast over a gaping wound that needs the kind of suturing provided by a massive capital injection that will be very apparent when they release their full year results for the period ending March 2015. Some feverish calls will have to be made or are probably being made to the key shareholders GoK and KLM to pony up certainly much more than the Kes 4.2 bn that has been put in Treasury budget estimates.

If GoK can consider injecting capital into a moribund, badly mismanaged train smash of a sugar miller like Mumias, it goes without saying that an injection into the national carrier is not only inevitable, but it is imperative. If it doesn’t happen the unimaginable impact will extend beyond Kenya Airways stakeholders: It will impact how business is done in the East African region as a whole.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

JKIA As The Engine For Kenya’s Economic Growth

Last week a work trip led me to pass through my favorite airport Schiphol in the Netherlands. Coming in on the final descent into Amsterdam, I noted there were at least 4 other flights in the skies above us, leaving a tell tale trail of white jet stream in their wake and I marveled at the remarkable skills of the Dutch air traffic controllers in keeping all these planes safely in their own paths. About 5 kilometres to the west of our descending plane was another plane that was moving at the same speed and altitude as we were. The similarity of movement was certified when the landing gear for our plane was released in perfect synchronicity with the neighbouring plane. That’s when I realized that both planes would be landing at exactly the same time albeit on different runways. I didn’t see the plane again as we descended into heavy fog that clung to the ground rendering visibility next to zero and I assumed that the plane landed without incident.

I became very curious about the size of Schiphol airport thereafter if two planes could land simultaneously and never meet again. It took at least 10 minutes for the plane to trundle along the interconnected network of taxiways to the terminal. Often, the vehicular traffic on the Amsterdam highways ran under the taxiways, confirming the fact that the airport expansion was a continuous evolution in a neighborhood where land was a scarce resource. It bears noting that Amsterdam’s Schiphol is the 14th busiest airport in the world and the 4th busiest in Europe.

But the airport is specifically and strategically operated to connect Netherlands with all the important economic, political and cultural cities in the world. This goal has been a financial success as Schiphol’s aviation operations contribute €26 billion (Kshs 2.7 trillion) to the Dutch GDP, with 500 companies located at the airport employing 65,000 people. The airport is connected to 323 direct destinations, resulting in 52.6 million passengers and 1.5 million tonnes of cargo annually. There are 425,565 take-offs and landings – collectively called air movements annually. This translates to 1,166 daily air movements. Total real estate on the terminal side is 650,000 m2 with 5 runways all of which are on 6,886 acres. On the revenue side, the airport generated €1.4 billion (Kshs 145 billion) in 2013 with a net profit of €227m (Kshs 23.6 billion).

It’s not difficult to see how the operating company – Schiphol Group – manages to generate good revenues through the execution of their business strategy. The business is run as a combination of four main operations: Aviation, Consumer Products & Services, Real Estate and Alliances & Participations. The Aviation business area operates at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and provides services and facilities to airlines, passengers and handling agents. It generates 57% of the total revenue for the group.
The Consumer Products & Services business area develops and manages the range of products and services available at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the key objective of which is to ensure that passengers enjoy a carefree and
comfortable journey. The business area grants concessions for retail and catering outlets, services and entertainment facilities, and operates retail outlets and car parks. It also creates advertising possibilities at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This generates 25% of total revenues. Real Estate develops, manages, operates and invests in property at and around Schiphol and other airports and generates 10% of total revenues. From the property under management, 33% are used as offices while 44% are used as industrial units. Alliances & Participations, which generates 8% of total revenues, consists of Schiphol Group’s interests in the regional airports in the Netherlands and its interests in airports abroad.

If you ever have the pleasure of flying into Schiphol airport, you will attest to the fact that it is the gateway to Dutch culture and plays an extremely prominent role in promoting the country as a tourist destination. Apart from the fact that the shops, restaurants, lounges and rest areas are of the highest quality with very friendly and professional staff, the visual layout of the airport is a constant reminder that there is more that lies to the country outside the confines of the terminal buildings. The success of the customer experience at Schiphol means that there are several repeat customers. 67% of the total passenger throughput in Schiphol are from outside the Netherlands.
What does this all mean? Airports can be big business. Kenya’s geographical location in right in the middle of the continent continues to undoubtedly place us, and Kenya Airways in particular, as the principal hub for intra Africa travel. Which is why the success of our national airline is symbiotically related to the success of Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). However, our airport lets us down. But then again, it’s not like we have jaw dropping or awe inspiring stories from the other competing airports such as Ethiopia’s Bole and Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo. The two have relatively newer facilities, but the (sad, bad and sometimes mad) attitude of their employees and the general perception of being a weary traveller’s pit stop is completely lacking. It is also noteworthy that not a single African airport appears in the top 50 list of busiest airports in the world. Yet, if you look at any global map, Africa sits plum in the centre and should naturally be the centre of global aviation paths. But then pigs would fly and other supernatural stories. It also bears noting that Schiphol Group’s shareholders are: State of the Netherlands 69.8%, Municipality of Amsterdam 20.0%, Aérports de Paris 8.0% and the Municipality of Rotterdam 2.2%. A Central and two Municipal governments own one of the most successful airport businesses in the world.

Politics can be set aside to provide a world class institution, run on world class business principles and delivering a world class experience. With the right management and incentives, JKIA can and should be a key driver of our economic growth engine.