‘Our ultimate aim is to create a vibrant and globally competitive financial sector that will promote high level of savings to finance Kenya’s overall investment needs. That will not happen without extensive reforms. Let me highlight some of the most important. First, we will establish a Nairobi International Financial Centre. Our model is the City of London. Once complete, it will consolidate Kenya’s position as our region’s hub, while also supplying the world-class financial services that East Africa’s rapidly growing oil and minerals sector needs.’

The above mentioned quote is extracted from a presentation made by Manoah Esipisu, the Secretary of Communication and State House Spokesperson on February 3rd 2014 at the Bloomberg Africa Forum. So I decided to dig up a little information on why the City of London stands tall and worthy of emulation in Esipisu’s educated eyes. First of all, the Greater London administrative area is made up of 32 boroughs. There are two cities within the 32 boroughs, namely the City of London and the City of Westminster. The City of London is the trading and financial nucleus of Greater London. Colloquially known as the Square Mile due to its geographical acreage of 1.12 square miles, it houses the London Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and Lloyd’s of London. Over 500 banks have offices in the City while a number of the world’s largest law firms are headquartered there and, consequently, the Square Mile accounted for 2.4% of United Kingdom’s GDP in 2009.

As at the last census in 2011, the City has a population of about 7,000 residents, but over 300,000 commute there daily to work, mainly in the financial services sector. Administratively, the City of London Corporation headed by the Lord Mayor governs the City. According to Wikipedia, the 2001 census showed the City as a unique district amongst 376 districts surveyed in England and Wales. The City had the highest number of one-person households, people with qualifications at degree level or higher and the highest indications of overcrowding. It recorded the lowest proportion of households with cars or vans, people who travel to work by car, married couple households and the lowest average household size: just 1.58 people. It also ranked highest within the Greater London area for the percentage of people with no religion and people who are employed. The City has its own police force with slightly over 800 police officers separate from the Metropolitan Police Service covering the remainder of Greater London.
My conclusions: to live in the City of London you have to be paid a ton of money to do a lot of work and have a total lack of discretionary time for matrimonial, social or religious matters! Oh, and that thing called traffic? What traffic? The public transport works quite well thank you! Well enough to get 300,000 in and out of the City environs daily.

So I look at Esipisu’s speech again, especially with regard to the aim of becoming a key financial centre for East Africa’s oil and minerals sector. A friend of mine providing consulting services in the rapidly expanding local Oil and Gas sector told me that there are at least over thirty foreign oil exploration related companies in Kenya closely followed behind by their attendant service providers in aviation, drilling equipment, security and what have you. They are located all over Nairobi as there doesn’t seem to have been foresight at central government level to create a bespoke business district for this critical source of foreign direct investment. Neither have there been any efforts on the immigration side to fast track work permits for the hundreds of specialized professionals that are flying into Kenya to work in the exploration fields. They arrive at JKIA and it takes 3 hours to get from the airport to their hotel rooms because the green city in the sun is actually the gridlocked city in the smog. The average Joe doesn’t want to drive if he can take clean, reliable and decent public transport. But for as long as the city’s transport policy is written by an individual who has a driver waiting for him at his designated parking spot under a cool parking shed, we will struggle to achieve the dream of becoming a financial centre. If goods and services cannot move or be provided freely in Nairobi then providers and consumers of capital, which is a key tenet of a global financial centre, will not come to deliver Esipisu’s dream.

If the Governor’s solution to the endemic traffic jam is to tell Nairobi natives to wake up earlier to get to work, then we’re sunk. Nairobi is not made up office working minions imprisoned on swivel chairs. It’s made up of entrepreneurs who traverse the length and breadth of the metropolitan area buying and selling goods and services. It’s made up of professionals moving from place to place to deliver their professional services as well as their customers coming to them for the same. It’s made up of citizens seeking medical, banking, insurance, education and a whole host of government services between 8 am and 5 pm. Nairobi natives cannot be trusted with the heavy responsibility of choosing the lesser evil between an ex-CEO of a grossly mismanaged corporate versus a stone thrower or, God help us, a bejeweled, money splashing hustler if 2017 rumors are to be believed. In my own view, a college of voters who constitute business owners should elect Nairobi County’s administrative leader. A staggered system of votes, based on number of employees can be designed so that those with more skin in the game have more say. A business owner with 10 employees or less would have one vote, one with 20 employees two votes etcetera.
Only then can we start seeing business minded individuals drive the social and economic agenda of this critical county and lay the groundwork that would help make some of Esipisu’s dreams of a regional financial centre valid.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka