‘Now or never’ is not a slogan for the eternity of the continent where man first appeared. But after decades of hopes, attempts, clearances, plans, appeals, backward marches, this seems to be the crucial moment in Malindi to get ready to see direct intercontinental flights arrive.
No illusions, for pity's sake, the writer already smelled the smell of Boeing fuel in the still-clean air of the Malindi-Mombasa Highway thirty-five years ago, and a few years later greeted the arrival of the first charter from Orio al Serio, via Luxor, and then back to Fokker, Bombardier and mockery until today.
Today, however, Kenya, in order to save its economy and the face of the political class that over the years and with different governments has brought it this far, with the complicity of international financial games, is faced with painful choices that are beginning to take shape: to sell or give in management of its ‘assets’ to repay the uncontrollable public debt and avert default.
If for situations such as the port of Mombasa, priorities go to those who directly contributed to creating the debt, developing infrastructure and projects, even for their own interests, for others for the Kenyan state it is a matter of finding useful partnerships to collect money and at the same time guarantee services, improving them if possible. Everything has a price, but it can also be the result of collaborations at high and institutional levels, or within bilateral relationships with countries that can then unlock other opportunities.
With regard specifically to the Malindi international airport, whose long-awaited upgrade to receive direct international flights would completely change the attractiveness of the tourist destination (of which Watamu is the emerging pearl, but other locations, such as Mambrui, are all yet to be exploited), something is happening.
First of all, if the deal whereby the government signs a 30-year management agreement for Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport to the Indian company Adani Group goes through, this would set an important precedent and for the first time Kenya would approach the idea of developing ‘project financing’ and improving the country by leasing it out, not selling it off.
It is a ‘middle way’ possibility to be considered.
Clearly, nobody does anything for nothing, it is the law of business.
Adani Group, which already has 37 airports under management or ownership in Asia, is asking in its contracts for concessions for many more years, the land adjacent to the airport, to develop parallel construction and commercial projects. In return, the airport will be redesigned, expanded and modernised, and services improved.
The draft agreement has unleashed the unions, which were not involved in the initial negotiations, causing strikes, while activists and bloggers (who have now replaced the non-existent opposition or allies of the majority) have denounced the risks of such a contract. Risks that do not go into the technical merits or the ‘quantum’, but have only one denominator: corruption. The fear is that behind the officialdom of the sale, there is a lot of ‘black’ for politicians and that in the end the money that the country desperately needs will end up in the pockets of the oligarchy in power.
But there is some good in deals like this, if they happen in the light of day and the judiciary, anti-corruption and activism monitor and follow them: they can be replicated in other similar situations.
This is where the Malindian airport comes in, with Italian interest.
For some time, some enlightened entrepreneurs in Watamu have been moving between Nairobi and Rome to assess the feasibility of a project that could involve Italian companies and create an induced business and interest in the public and private sectors. The period is ideal, given the convergence of important showcases such as the Meloni government's Mattei Plan for Africa, where Kenya has a role as a pilot country, direct involvement in the Kenyan economy by large Italian companies such as ENI and Leonardo, for example, and the possibility for other companies to draw on loans from the Foreign Trade Corporation and agree on advantageous and integrated situations with Kenya to work on the idea of an international airport managed by Italy in Malindi. Not to mention the recent joint statement by the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, and the Kenyan Minister of Defence, Sopyan Tuya, ready to make the Luigi Broglio space centre in Malindi-Ngomeni a continental hub for aerospace research.
The meeting two days ago between the Italian Ambassador to Kenya, Roberto Natali, and the Kenyan Minister of Transport, Davis Chirchir, is significant. Not only of the commitment of our institutions to increase collaboration between the two countries, but to understand what the government in Nairobi has to overcome in order to arrive at the expansion of the airport, access an economic prospectus of a possible operation, and perhaps act as a go-between for those who intend to invest.
Among so many rumours heard and rejected in past years, this is a decidedly new approach in line with Kenya's current situation and its relations with Rome. Kenya, which should not miss the opportunity to try to create the conditions for reaching an agreement, similar or even different from the one between JKIA and Adani Group. The evolution is all to follow.