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Ratio Blog: GE Forum on Nairobi City Development |
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Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
Rachel Keeler attended GE’s ‘Thought Leadership Forum’ on ‘African Cities in the 21st Century’ and was struck by the discrepancy between the grand plans and the Kenyan government’s seemingly grand inability to implement them.
It seems a strange marriage at first that GE, the world’s largest company, is using its new-found clout in Africa to promote a plan conjured by one of the continent’s most inefficient governments. Kenya’s Nairobi Metro Vision 2030 vows to transform over the next two decades every aspect of dysfunctional Nairobi life: water, power, roads, security, health, waste management and public transport. Of course the metro vision seems so unreasonably ambitious because it sits atop a tall stack of failed government plans. Nonetheless, GE envisions itself as the partner to provide the technology, management and financing to make the vision happen.
Thus the company hosted a ‘Thought Leadership Forum’ on 14 October 2009 in Nairobi on ‘African Cities of the 21st Century’ to discuss how the public and private sectors can work together to (literally) pave the road to 2030.
What emerged from four hours of panel discussions and Q&A time was nothing very new: The government’s vision has no real implementation plan aside from expectations that the private sector will carry out much of work. There is plenty of financing available for this infrastructure development, but no one can figure out how to structure and streamline a bankable deal flow (we covered this in our analysis of the EAC Investment Conference in July 2009 in EAC Investment Conference: Feedback on Infrastructure ). GE hopes to fill the gap by pairing its technology with project development expertise. But the problem remains that the government cannot even enforce the city planning laws that it already has (something Ratio has also written about here: Business Hub Nairobi: Green City in the Traffic? ), let alone lead the way on a new set of transformational urban statutes.
At the core of this dilemma sits perhaps the greatest barrier to progress in Kenya: an enormous disconnect between the country’s development needs and the smart innovative people who can meet them. This was obvious while watching the public and private portions of GE’s forum attempt to interact: At one point two young Kenyan entrepreneurs stood up to ask what plans the government had to integrate their ideas and solutions into its grand vision. In response, Metro Development Secretary John Ndirangu Maina (filling in for the metro minister who was scheduled to speak but did not show up) bumbled through an incoherent speech, at the end of which he held up a phone book-sized copy of Vision 2030 and exhorted the audience to spread the word that a plan had finally arrived to save the city.
Thankfully, the Director General of Vision 2030 was there to step in: Mugo Kibati left the private sector, where he was once the successful CEO of East African Cables, to help the government implement its national development plans. Kibati is smart, pragmatic and frank, and he may be the only hope Nairobi has of making it in one functioning piece through the next 20 years. He says he wants to engage the business community, but is honest about how hard that will be from inside a government that has never done this very well.
Working with GE could be a good place to start. Kenya’s greatest strength has always been its vibrant private sector – but business leaders can’t run the country alone. Cities need proactive planning and diligent law enforcement, and that has to come from the government. As always, it remains to be seen whether this one can muster enough gumption and talent to get anything done.
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