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Nairobi Versus Kigali Is This Really an Issue

I recently had a chat with a friend of mine from Rwanda, who was in Nairobi for a work assignment. She had been vaccinated against Covid-19 a few days before her departure and this was after about three calls from the Rwandan government requesting her to go to the vaccination centre. As she is in the banking sector, they are categorized as essential workers hence the calls. Eventually, due to her impending trip to Kenya and constant encouragement from her friends, she went to get the shot. She was highly appreciative of the communication framework that her government had put in place which had listed, by name and telephone number, all the essential workers that needed to get the vaccination and literally hounded them to go and get the shot.

But this is where it gets interesting. She also told me that the Rwandan government went to refugee camps and vaccinated the refugees! It would appear that the thinking in that government is that the refugees represent a soft underbelly of potential large scale community transmission and if left forgotten or unattended to, could end up unravelling a focused attention to stop the rapid transmission of this killer disease amongst the country’s citizenry.

Last week there was an interesting debate on Twitter regarding the potential of Rwanda becoming an East African travel hub once the joint venture between Qatar Airlines and Rwandair begins to bear fruit. One person claimed that a large international NGO had packed up its bags and relocated to Kigali from Nairobi and this was the beginning of Nairobi’s death knell as a regional headquarter for many international organizations. Others spoke about Kigali’s clean, secure neighborhoods and well organized public transport system including the ubiquitous boda boda operators who have clear identification on their yellow visibility jackets plus riding helmets and can be traced to a man in the event of an accident or incident. The fact is Kigali is the cleanest, organized and most secure East African capital city. They have excellent, publicly available internet and, perhaps due to their low population size compared to their East African counterparts, a very effective community grassroots system that ensures the government is communicating to and receiving information from the simplest villager.

On the other hand, the proponents of the Nairobi-will-never-die brigade spoke to the large middle class and bigger economic base in Kenya, together with the diversity of residents and wide offerings in the retail, housing and hospitality industries. At the very minimum, the debate about Kigali taking over as East Africa’s regional economic and travel hub comes down to hardware and software.

The hardware consists of infrastructure in the form of world class commercial and residential properties to house the various offices and thousands of staff that would man the organizations. It would consist of the retail spaces and the retailers that would provide the comfortable trappings for the expatriate residents and the local middle class that would emerge as professionals working in these organizations. It would consist of the hospitality offerings in the form of hotel bed capacity at an international standard for the thousands of business visitors engaging with these organizations as well as a dynamic and diverse restaurant and entertainment scene. It would necessitate a strong private medical industry in the form of good hospitals and medical personnel that could accommodate medical emergencies that might occur in the short term. It would also consist of fast connectivity to multiple global international business hubs for the travelling residents and visitors. Finally, but not exhaustively or conclusively, the hardware would also consist of providing a safe and secure environment within which these organizations and their people can operate effectively within a manageable socio-political space.

On the software side, the people element should be examined. Finding talented, well-educated and diversely experienced local professionals who are in great supply, thus eliminating the need to backfill the staffing cadre with expensive expatriates would be a key consideration. It is one thing to set up an organization and it is a whole other kettle of fish to make it work effectively and cost efficiently through good people. The opening conversation in this piece spoke to the well-oiled machinery that the Rwandan government runs in a country with a population of about 13 million people or a quarter the size of Kenya’s population. I leave it to you to decide, particularly if you have ever visited Rwanda, as to whether the Nairobi versus Kigali regional hub debate is one worth losing sleep over!

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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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]