When a foreign head of state or a high-ranking global dignitary is due to land, the city undergoes a miraculous, 72-hour metamorphosis.
Potholes are suddenly filled with steaming bitumen, road markings reappear in blinding white, lawns are manicured, and flowers are planted with such embarrassing desperation.
Ahead of the Africa Forward Summit, currently happening in Nairobi, and whose chief guest is French President Emmanuel Macron, the Nairobi County government, in conjunction with the national government, pulled all the stops to ensure that the city is squeaky clean, with the roads experiencing rapid improvements – lanes were marked, sidewalks were swept, traffic lights started blinking and the streets were plunged into sudden waves of immaculate orderliness.
All of a sudden, the din, the madness, the crowding and the commotion were gone.
Roads, which had for years been neglected, with minimal maintenance and almost zero attention from the authorities, were all of a sudden transformed into European-esque lanes, cleaned, paved, and brushed as the big shots from one of the world’s global powers flew into town.
Unlike in the ordinary days, when the city is merely a noisy turbulence of chaos, tumult, disorder and filth, the Africa Forward Summit saw parts of Nairobi glistening, with city dwellers unable to reconcile the usual squalor with the new tidiness.
Kenyans online remarked on the drastic changes, questioning the government about its obvious obsession with aesthetics as foreigners jetted into town, with many wondering why the city could not maintain the same standards of sanitation and order even when no powerful hotshot was rolling in.
Many found the abrupt improvements rather insulting, wondering why Kenyans didn’t deserve to exist in pristine environments, without a trigger from visiting VIPs.
X user Juma G wrote: “Let me shock you… Kenyatta Avenue was carpeted and painted in less than 24 hours because we have global visitors. It means KENHA and others can do their jobs but they are too lazy and corrupt. It means they can fix a road in days, and not years.”
Someone else wrote, “I was shocked even a notorious pothole (say a crater) near Serena Hotel was sealed and the road marked though poorly all the way to the Nyayo House roundabout. Africans don’t love themselves. I wish Trump comes and spend a month in Nairobi visiting every estate…”
On his part, Njeru Kennedy wrote: “Govt is efficient when it suits them. And yes, work can be done and completed in record time, if needed to. Kenyatta Avenue, the major artery smack in the city centre, has been dilapidated for aeons. But here comes the Mzungu…”
Other Kenyans called upon foreign leaders to visit more, stay around more and tour more parts of Nairobi – and Kenya – as it appears their eminent presence triggers governments to deliver to their own people.
“We need all the leaders of the European Union to schedule weekly visits to Nairobi. And they should go to all the streets, Tom Mboya Street, Accra Road, Ronald Ngala, Biashara Street, we need them to help us get services from our own governments to whom we pay taxes!” Sheila Ndong wrote.
Nairobi’s ‘Potemkin Village’ approach to infrastructure is more than just an annoyance; it is a confession of misplaced priorities.
By quickly fixing roads only when the world is watching, the government signals that the dignity of a visiting dignitary is worth more than the everyday safety of a Kenyan commuter.
It’s a city choking under the weight of event-based infrastructure, as presidents and governors resort to performance-art governance, all in a bid to sweep the dirt under the rug until after the visitor is gone – and then the mess, the garbage, the muck and the madness roars back in deafening proportions.
Joe Arunda wrote: “True development is not a performance. If the government can mobilise contractors, equipment, and materials to pave a road in three days for a visiting dignitary, it proves that the capacity exists. The missing ingredient isn’t money or machinery; it’s the political will to treat the Kenyan public with the same respect accorded to a foreign delegation.”
