Compromise candidate or not, Norwegian is best bet for airports job

Transport Permanent Secretary Nyakera Irungu (left) and the Kenya Airports Authority's (KAA's) chairman, General (Rtd) Julius Karangi, at a media briefing at KAA's office at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on July 12, 2016 in which they announced the appointment of Jonny Andersen as KAA's new managing director. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The management of Kenya's airports must be taken to the next level because they are not merely airports any more.

  • Today, airports are designed to be integrated air transport, logistics, distribution, shopping and leisure hubs.

I didn’t think the idea of bringing in a high-earning expatriate, Norwegian Jonny Andersen, to run the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) was such a bright idea. Is it not the height of irony that 50 years after independence, we are still going all the way to Norway to get someone to run our airport? It rubs my patriotic instincts up the wrong way.

I don’t know whether we tried hard enough to get a Kenyan from the diaspora. In the initial stages, word had it that one of the leading contenders for the plum job was a Kenya working in a senior position with a large airport in the United States.

Yet if you don’t put everything into the context of the vicious factional intrigues which have been going on within the authority and which set the stage for the eventually hiring of the expatriate to head the authority, you will have missed the significance of the dynamics surrounding recent happenings.

From what I gather, the Norwegian was brought in as a compromise candidate to settle vicious infighting for the control of the authority pitting Kikuyu and Kalenjin elites.

It was a battle of high stakes, the dramatis personae, self-absorbed elites blinded by a bloated sense of entitlement to state jobs and positions, wallowing in the mistaken belief that jobs within the authority belonged to their tribe, according to a pre-election power sharing deal signed by leaders of the Jubilee Coalition in 2012.

The KAA almost went into paralysis because of the vicious infighting within its board. We have once again been taught the lesson that when you appoint public officers on the basis of political patronage, without regard to neither merit nor skills, and when you have a situation where public officers embrace the mindsets that lead them to believe that “it is their turn to eat”, you have a recipe for disaster.

The appointment of the Norwegian has provided us with the space to look afresh at recent developments in the aviation industry and to learn from what other countries are doing with their own airports.

FIRST TIME

Indeed, Mr Andersen’s appointment is the first time we are putting the running of the airport in the hands of a person with world-class and deep domain knowledge and experience in aviation and a clear understanding of today’s challenges.

An airport is not just a place where planes land and take off. If you look at the trends in the rest of the world, airports are evolving into airport cities. Today, the talk is about developing an "aetropolis".

I hope that Mr Andersen will make a difference and make us appreciate that running a modern airport is way beyond what to expect from people with the level of knowledge, experience and capacities of long time acting CEO Yatich Kangugo, or even the former board chairman, Mr David Kimaiyo.

Indeed, the outgoing regime of Mr Kangugo has exited, leaving behind an organisation suffering from a serious case of mismanagement. This is the picture you see when you go through a recent systems audit report for the KAA by the Auditor-General dated January 11, 2016. What you will find in that report is not only a litany of cases of procurement irregularities, but several cases of serious weaknesses and deficiencies in accounting and financial management in the corporation.

The report reveals that even such basics as reconciling the corporation’s cash and bank balances to bank statements was not done to the satisfaction of the auditors.

The projects cited for mismanagement, inordinate delays, and irregular procurement include the building and expansion of terminals, rehabilitation of runways at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, renovations at Wilson Airport, and rehabilitation of airstrips and Isiolo and Homa Bay.

The management of our airports must be taken to the next level because they are not merely airports any more. Today, airports are designed to be integrated air transport, logistics, distribution, shopping and leisure hubs. London’s status as the world’s biggest financial centre is in part anchored on connectivity through Europe. The South Africans are developing O.R. Tambo Airport into the new breed of airport cities.

In the Middle East, where Gulf states are diversifying their economies from dependence on oil to provision of financial services, the shift is anchored first on construction of world class airports. Shanno of Ireland comes with a complete special economic zone.

Here, we worry and obsess about the tribe of the CEO of our airport authority, and threaten to defect to opposition parties when the son of the soil has been fired.

Jonny Andersen has my full support. The running of the airport must be taken to the next level.