Sights and Sounds of Kigali

I spent the early part of last week on a work assignment that has taken me on an annual trip to Kigali for the last five years. However this year I was struck with the significantly high number of new buildings that were sprouting out of every corner of the central business district.

First let me give the ubiquitous credit that Kigali deserves. You can eat off the pristine streets. Literally. I took an early morning walk, before the sun’s rays had even slipped out of bed. I was assured that the city was extremely safe even in the dwindling darkness. The streets were deathly quiet while ornamental bottle palms rose ramrod straight along the medians, standing guard over the brightly lit roads. Every so often, I would randomly find solitary armed guards standing at ease on a street corner providing undisguised assurance. Despite being completely alone in the breaking dawn, I never once considered that I might be unsafe.

In the course of walking along the streets, the sheen fell off the luster of what looked like a rapidly growing commercial real estate sector. Several new buildings, many of which had startlingly beautiful architecture I might add, stood empty past the first floor. By the end of my walk I was struck at how many such buildings I had walked past. I asked some locals what the back story was later in the day. It turns out that part of the city’s strategic master plan was to zone certain areas as commercial. This zoning came with a land utilization plan, which required that any building with less than one floor would have to have an additional minimum of four floors above it. Where the building owner was unable to undertake this development, he would have to sell the property to someone else who purportedly could.

The result, of course, is an overstock of commercial real estate in Kigali simply because there are not as many viable off takers for office space as was imagined. In a defensive play, the City of Kigali this year passed a rule that businesses could not be based in residential areas. The objective, obviously, is to drive these tenants into the central business district and provide much needed respite from the stress induced heart attacks that low occupancy, coupled with oversupply causes to the highly leveraged property developers.

This cannot go on for too long though. At some point the banking industry will stop giving loans to developers, a number of whom are foreign, due to the repayment lag that is certainly developing on the real estate segment of their loan portfolios. If credit in that sector begins to become tight, then developers will have to either use cash to build – which requires excessively deep pockets – or they may have to borrow from other jurisdictions, which brings in greater risks such as currency fluctuations. The City of Kigali fathers will have to relax or pretend not to notice the property owners who are not acceding to the zoning laws requiring storied buildings.

One thing the Rwandese are getting right is the international conference business. With the traditional hut inspired architectural masterpiece that is the Rwandan Convention Centre, as well as the singular government focus to drive conference tourism, Kigali has certainly established itself as a premier conference destination. When this assignment took me there last year, we landed at the airport only to find the immigration queues literally starting on the tarmac of the airport, before getting into the terminal building. A KLM jumbo jet had landed just before us and over 300 passengers were inching their way to about eight immigration counters. All this because that particular week was a big agricultural conference. It took about two and a half maddening hours to get past immigration only to get to the hotel and discover that the government had commandeered our rooms (which we were told is not uncommon) to give them to conference participants of their choice. We were politely “moved” to other hotels, while my colleague was dispatched to a dive somewhere in the outskirts of the city, which made for entertaining anecdotes from a furious colleague who had mentally prepared to stay at the 5 star hotel that we were originally booked in.

I do have to applaud the Rwandans for providing electronic immigration gates at the airport for their nationals. The gates are unmanned and only require the nationals to scan their passports. The same service is commendably provided to expatriates working in the country, who can register for the service in advance making for faster processing of resident passengers. If you have never visited Rwanda, give it some consideration. It’s a rare part of black Africa that is visibly trying to get things right.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Sights and Sounds of Zanzibar

About three years ago, we chose to spend part of the December holidays as tourists in Zanzibar. It was still at the time when the travel advisories against Kenya were in full effect following the Westgate terrorist assault. We flew into Zanzibar’s Kisauni airport, where, quite blissfully, there was a separate immigration counter for East African Community(EAC) citizens, contrary to the Dar es Salaam Julius Nyerere International Airport’s legacy of treating all arriving visitors as one heaving block of unwelcome travellers.

It took about an hour to drive to our destination in the northern part of the island, where we were going to stay at a villa belonging to a South African owner. We did however get pulled over twice on the otherwise uneventful journey. The first time was by the Zanzibar tourist police who wanted to check the “papers” of our van. The “papers” were found to be in good order and we were happily waved along.The next incident was not so easy. Two regular policemen wearing the full white Zanzibari police uniform, buttons agonizingly stretched across their corpulent bellies, asked Kiba our driver for his driving license, PSV license and rate card in that order after taking a long, languorous look at the license stickers on the windscreen and finding no fault. Of course, Kiba couldn’t produce a rate card since the van belonged to the villa’s owner, so he was told that the policemen would keep his driving license until he could find it. The cops were quite pragmatic and told Kiba to take down their mobile numbers and give it to any cop who might stop us ahead so that they could explain that they were in possession of the license.

After a few minutes, one cop asked Kiba to step out of the vehicle for a “conversation”. Money changed hands, the driving license was released and we were dispatched on our merry way. Total time taken for the transaction: 15 glorious minutes of our precious holiday. Kiba was visibly embarrassed and bristling with anger at the capricious display of greed in front of his visitors. We chuckled and consoled his morose spirit with the fact that we were coming from a country where our own Kenyan traffic cops would make his Zanzibari traffic cops look like omena at a Nile Perch beauty parade.

View of Stone Town, Zanzibar
Image from http://theseyyida-zanzibar.com/

Zanzibar is a beautiful island with a heritage quite similar to Lamu. Arab, African and Indian influences have melted into a traditional, conservative Islamic culture. Stone Town, which is the main city on the island is a tourist haven with several narrow winding streets dotted by the ubiquitous curio hustlers cajoling you to visit their shops that have the same kikoys, African traditional masks, paintings and batiks. I spoke to one boutique owner, marveling at how they were lucky to still have tourists in Zanzibar, as our villa owner had told us that they enjoyed bookings eleven out of twelve months in a year. She was not as bullish, however.

She told us that most of the tourists to Zanzibar were typically on a Kenya-Tanzania-Zanzibar circuit and the events in Kenya had significantly impacted the numbers coming through to Zanzibar at that time in 2014. This conversation was replicated two months ago when I was on a working visit to Kigali, shortly after the August 8th 2017 elections here in Nairobi. The general manager at the hotel I was staying at was lamenting at the impact the Kenyan elections were having on visitors to a city some 1,200 kilometres south west of Nairobi. He said the exact same thing as the Zanzibari boutique owner. A large number of tourists to Rwanda were usually partaking in a circuit that started in Kenya. Cancellations to Kenya therefore meant that the whole circuit, including Rwanda would be cancelled.


Image from https://www.neverendingfootsteps.com

That our fortunes (and our sticky-fingered traffic cops) are intertwined within the East African Community is an unassailable fact. The intangible but very apparent influence that Kenya has on the region’s economy should give some pause to the proponents of the monetary (and doubtful political) union for the EAC.Our seeming inability to arrive at a mutually agreeable political solution is one that is of our own Kenyan making, and should never be exposed to the wider, unsuspecting regional citizenry. Or perhaps the opposite is true: a regional constituency might require a very different big picture thinking at the political level, making Kenyan tribal issues the non-issues that they need to eventually become.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Sights and Sounds of Kigali’s Finest

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Last Tuesday I flew to Kigali on the early evening flight and landed into a warm, balmy city. As we deplaned and walked to the terminal, I saw a long line of passengers walking from across the tarmac having just disembarked from a KLM flight. I hightailed it down the escalators in the terminal building as I knew the lines at immigration would be insane. They ended up being insane. But I didn’t mind as it gave me time to observe the immigration hall inside the Kigali International Airport. The modern hall is purpose built, with high ceilings and an almost clinical white décor. Illumination from the bright lights bounced off the sterile white walls and onto the clean-shaven, smart and well-spoken immigration officers. They sat on high stools and were easily accessible due to the absence of the ubiquitous thick glass barrier found in many immigration counters.


Image from www.rwandagorillassafari.com

To the far right of the immigration hall were two channels of passage with a large welcoming sign above that said “E-Gates Nationals Only”. There were clear instructions pasted on the side on how to use the 21st century contraption: Walk to the reader, scan the bio data page of your passport, wait for the beep to signify transaction complete and voila, heaven’s gates would open and you, Citizen Rwanda will gladly step back home. I stood and stared for a long time as the only other airport I had seen this was London’s Heathrow. The only pity was that the bulk of the passengers from the two flights were non-Rwandese and so I only observed two citizens triumphantly sail through.

I was picked up by an extremely chatty driver named Tresor, who spoke fluent Swahili as he was born in Bujumbura where he said Swahili is more widely spoken due to proximity to, and large trade with, the DRC. Since I couldn’t get a word in edgewise past his excitable monologue I sat back to listen but I noticed a glowing orb in the far distance as we drove past the gates of the airport. It was a beautiful sight against the clear night sky and something that I had certainly never seen in my past Kigali visits. I parked that question for later. Tresor had much to say about how the city was now full of Chinese who had come to build infrastructure in Rwanda. I puckered my brow in reflection as I had observed massive buildings being put up in Sandton, Johannesburg by Chinese as well as critical arterial roads in Kampala not to mention our very own Kenyan railway and highways. Historians will more likely document the not so subtle Chinese infiltration of Africa, when the effects of this economic colonization shall be obvious. Within 15 minutes my curiosity about the glowing orb was assuaged as we approached the Kigali Convention Centre (KCC).

The Kigali Convention Centre
Image from http://www.newtimes.co.rw

In my past visits to this beautiful, serene city, I had driven past the construction of the $300 million KCC without paying much attention to the distinct spherical framework of the emerging building. The Rwandese government has constructed an iconic building that will become to Kigali what the Sydney Opera House, London’s Tower Bridge and Nairobi’s KICC have done in terms of being globally recognized city trade marks. Its curved silhouette, whose inspiration is the traditional Rwandese hut, is sheathed with luminous lighting that projects the ethereal glow I saw all the way from the airport. With a capacity for up to 5,000 delegates, the KCC has been built with the aim of making Kigali the premier conference destination site in the region. Together with the refurbished airport and a growing number of new hotels, the Rwandan government aims to use meetings and conferences as a key growth pillar for the economy. Next to the conference centre is a brand spanking new 292- room Radisson Blu Convention Centre Hotel which was opened just in time for the World Economic Forum in Africa (WEF) meeting in May 2016. I don’t think it was accidental that Kigali was chosen as the location for this annual meeting as the conference theme, Connecting Africa’s Resources Through Digital Transformation, was undertaken against a backdrop of free high speed wifi in most of the hotels and 4G free wifi provided in the public transport system.
Actually a Rwandese acquaintance reminisced with us the following day about the rapid growth of 5 star hotels in Rwanda. He spoke with bemusement as he recollected how the Kigali Marriott Hotel had been under construction for a long time and had literally been completed and furnished a month to the WEF conference. The government organizers were keen to ensure that WEF delegates had access to 5 star accommodations and couldn’t understand why the Marriott management was not ready to avail the premises for this momentous event. “The hotel is not up to global Marriott standards in its current form,” was the alleged response from the owners, “We need another three months before we can open the hotel.”

The government promptly bussed in experienced hotel staff from Kenya and Uganda, slapped a new banner at the front of the hotel calling it “Century Hotel” and sewed the same name on top of the Marriot name on the staff uniforms. By the time WEF delegates landed in May, the hotel was open for (temporary) business faster than you could say kusema na kutenda. Of course this is anecdotal but is illustrative of the can-do attitude that’s widely prevalent within Rwandese government circles.

A benchmarking visit to Rwanda is critical to any African that wants to see what urban planning, good road infrastructure (I didn’t feel or see a single pothole as I crisscrossed the city), extremely clean streets and excellent security looks like. On one of the nights we went out for dinner, we found women walking completely alone at half past nine, brazenly carrying handbags and visibly comfortable about personal well being. To paraphrase the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina: One day we shall write about this place.

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

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