Evans 🦊 retweeted
Dear @KenyaAirways
You better get those parked dreamliners back into service, as the peak season is here
Everyone will be upgrading equipment on routes as well as increasing frequencies.
Like JFK route needs daily not 5X weekly, CPT, FIH,LOS, DXB needs a B788 daily this season.
ama aje @mohammedhersi @grok @walubengovich @kenxstar @ke_aviation
Dear @KenyaAirways
You better get those parked dreamliners back into service, as the peak season is here
Everyone will be upgrading equipment on routes as well as increasing frequencies.
Like JFK route needs daily not 5X weekly, CPT, FIH,LOS, DXB needs a B788 daily this season.
ama aje @mohammedhersi @grok @walubengovich @kenxstar @ke_aviation
Dear @KenyaAirways
Get Freighters B777 or B767s asap
Treat this as a matter of urgency
These B737 are burning fuel for small cargo space
KENYA AIRWAYS to deploy its B777 as a flypast on 5th Jan during the Bayern Munich Vs Ajax game at Talanta Stadium
@KenyaAirways @FCBayern @AFCAjax @KasaraniStadium @sportskenya @magicalkenya
This is very comprehensive @mohammedhersi
You have explained how BICC will contribute towards Kenya's GDP
Our hope is we get transparency, seemless work turnaround and above all focused leadership
1/3 Why the Bomas International Convention Complex Will Be Kenya's Greatest Economic Multiplier Since KICC
In 1973, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta handed this nation a building that was decades ahead of its time. The Kenyatta International Convention Centre, with its cylindrical tower and its amphitheatre shaped like a traditional hut, announced to the world that a young African republic could host the world. For half a century it did exactly that. UNCTAD 14 in 2016. TICAD VI, the first Tokyo International Conference on African Development ever held on African soil. The Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in 2018, with more than 18,000 delegates. The Africa Climate Summit in 2023, with some 20,000. And in May this year, the Africa Forward Summit, where more than 30 Heads of State and over 4,000 delegates gathered in Nairobi for the first Africa-France summit ever held in an Anglophone country.
KICC carried Kenya's diplomatic and business tourism ambitions on its shoulders for fifty years. But fifty years is a long time, and the world's meetings industry has moved on. Kigali built a showpiece. Addis Ababa, Cape Town and Durban kept investing. Nairobi kept squeezing ever larger events into a venue designed for the 1970s.
That is why the Bomas International Convention Complex matters. Rising on more than 323,500 square metres at the junction of Lang'ata and Magadi Roads, the BICC is designed to hold 11,000 people at a time: a 5,000 seat convention hall, a 3,500 seat auditorium, a ballroom, some 35 meeting rooms and a presidential pavilion able to host up to 30 Heads of State. It is solar powered. Two five-star hotels are planned on site. The main structure is up, and the United Nations, the Africa Cup of Nations and the Kenya Bureau of Standards have already booked it.
Mzee gave us KICC. President William Ruto is giving us Bomas. Love him or hate him, give the man his flowers.
The real story of a convention centre is not the building. It is what happens to an entire economy when 8,000 delegates land in Nairobi in the same week.
✅️1. It starts at JKIA. Every one of those delegates arrives on an airline, pays airport and landing charges, and is met by a taxi, a shuttle or a chauffeur-driven car. That is before anyone has picked up a lanyard.
✅️2. Then comes the bed. Put 8,000 delegates in Nairobi for an average of four nights and you have generated 32,000 bed nights in a single week. That fills hotels from Westlands to Upper Hill, from Karen to Lang'ata, and spills into serviced apartments, guest houses and Airbnbs across the city. When Nairobi sells out, the overflow goes to Machakos, Naivasha and Kajiado. Occupancy jumps, and so do average room rates. Every revenue manager in this country knows exactly what a city-wide compression week does to the bottom line.
✅️3. Then come the eateries. Delegates do not eat conference sandwiches for dinner. They go out. The nyama choma joints, the fine dining rooms, the rooftop bars, the coffee shops and the Lang'ata Road institutions a stone's throw from Bomas all fill up. Behind every plate is a farmer, a butcher, a fishmonger, a baker and a supplier.
✅️4. Then come the hundreds of trades nobody sees: interpreters, audiovisual technicians, printers, event planners, florists, security firms, decorators, photographers, tailors, Maasai Market traders, curio sellers and the boda boda rider who delivers the forgotten charger at midnight.
✅️5. Kenya's own industry estimates put the spend of an international delegate at roughly Sh376,000 per conference trip of three to six days. Multiply that by 8,000 delegates and a single large convention injects something in the order of Sh3 billion into the economy. In one week. From one event. And Bomas is built to host many such events a year, sometimes several at once.
Evans 🦊 retweeted
3/3
The deadlines have slipped. The original April 2026 completion date moved to September and now to December, and the Africa Forward Summit had to move to KICC. Reported cost estimates have climbed from Sh31.5 billion toward figures as high as Sh42 billion. Members of Parliament have questioned the Ministry of Defence's role in delivering it. Culture lovers worry about the future of Bomas as the home of Kenya's heritage.
These concerns deserve straight answers, and the government owes Kenyans full transparency on costs and contracts. But let us keep perspective.
Major convention centres around the world routinely miss their first deadlines. The President says the project is being funded through the Tourism Levy, money collected from the tourism industry and finally being reinvested in tourism infrastructure. The plans include a heritage zone that keeps the cultural soul of Bomas alive. And KICC does not become redundant. With two world-class venues, Nairobi can host two major events at the same time, which no other city in the region can do.
A delayed building that stands for fifty years is far better than a cheap one that was never built.
What we must do to cash the cheque.
A building alone does not fill itself. If Kenya is serious about turning Bomas into billions, the hard work begins now.
📌1. Bid aggressively. The Kenya National Convention Bureau must be resourced to chase rotating international association congresses: medical, scientific, engineering, legal, financial. These are booked three to seven years ahead. The bidding should have started yesterday.
📌2. Remove visa friction. No delegate should struggle with an online entry process or an extra fee. Conference delegates registered for approved events should enjoy fast-tracked, low cost entry.
📌3. Expand air connectivity. More direct flights to JKIA, and a strong Kenya Airways, are the arteries of the meetings industry
📌4. Fix the last mile. Dualling the road between Bomas and Karen is a start. Delegates must move between hotels, the venue and the airports without losing two hours in traffic.
📌5. Build the delegate package. Hotels, airlines, DMCs, lodges and beach resorts must work together on ready-made pre and post conference itineraries, sold at the point of registration.
📌6. Run it professionally. Bring in experienced venue management, protect it from political interference, and publish annual performance data so Kenyans can see the return on their investment.
📌7. Train our people. Utalii College and our hospitality schools must produce the event managers, chefs, technicians and front of house teams a world-class venue demands.
Give him his flowers
Every generation of leadership leaves behind landmarks. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta gave us KICC. Mzee Moi gave us Kasarani. Mwai Kibaki gave us the Thika Superhighway, Uhuru gave us Nairobi Express way and the Dongo Kundu bypass at the coast . These were all criticised in their day, and today we cannot imagine Kenya without them.
The Bomas International Convention Complex will join that list. Twenty years from now, when a global summit opens in Nairobi and 11,000 delegates fill its halls, nobody will remember the missed deadlines. They will remember who had the vision and the courage to build it.
Politics will come and go. Elections will be won and lost. But infrastructure endures, and so does the economic multiplier it creates. On this one, President Ruto @WilliamsRuto deserves credit. Love him or hate him, give the man his flowers.
As always, I choose to remain an optimist
MH
KENYA AIRWAYS should put plans to ensure that the B777, once it returns from JNB, heads to Lagos as KQ534 and be back in the morning for the LHR route
@KenyaAirways
Uganda Airlines inaugral flight to Accra with a stopover in Lagos
Connecting East to the West
@flightradar24 @UG_Airlines
Kenya COWs to the WORLD
The KENYA AIRWAYS plane carrying 50 dairy cows from Kenya to Lagos
Can we have a cow emoji on it? FR??
@KenyaAirways @flightradar24
flightradar24.com/KQA2534/42…
Evans 🦊 retweeted
The KENYA AIRWAYS plane carrying 50 dairy cows from Kenya to Lagos
Can we have a cow emoji on it? FR??
@KenyaAirways @flightradar24
flightradar24.com/KQA2534/42…
The KENYA AIRWAYS plane carrying 50 dairy cows from Kenya to Lagos
Can we have a cow emoji on it? FR??
@KenyaAirways @flightradar24
flightradar24.com/KQA2534/42…
Lufthansa is deploying its A340s to Nairobi route. Indicating this is a lucrative route for airlines
Soon to be retired. Noisy planes indeed
@flightradar24
