Kenya lacks the infrastructure to host Olympic Games

Some years ago, the then Sports Minister Ochillo Ayacko, said Kenya can host the Olympics but never said when that can happen.

A few years later, Prime Minister Raila Odinga also said something to that effect, but if he has taken time off his busy schedule to watch the London Olympics, he must have realised hosting the Games is not a walk in the park and is easier talked about than done.

With every passing year, technology advances and the kind of gadgetry that have been used at the London Games will be obsolete by 2016, when Rio will be the host – and even by then, Kenya will not have made any remarkable investment into any new gadgetry that can support an international sporting event of that, or lesser magnitude.

Granted, equipment can always be outsourced from sponsors, but there must be an able infrastructure or platforms to support them or on which they can run, and this is what Kenya is yet even to think of putting in place.

It is laughable that with the kind of infrastructure – brick and mortar - that Kenya has, someone could even think that Kenya can host the Olympic Games.

Since Kenya puts a lot of emphasis on athletics, or simply running, they must have thought that the Olympic Games is all about that, and did not consider other disciplines whose facilities are even more expensive than the ones needed for plain running.

There is archery, rowing, equestrian sports, shooting, diving, fencing, gymnastics and many others that Kenya has never invested in, considering that since the construction of the stadium in Kasarani for the 4th All Africa Games in 1987, no other sporting facility worth its name has been constructed.

When it comes to the hosting city, the less said the better because so far, there is no Kenyan city than can host such an event which requires many other facilities like a proper public transport system and accommodation facilities that can cater for tens of thousands of visitors for a period of one month.

It is pointless to keep narrating why Kenya cannot host the Olympics in the next 30 plus years for the simple reason that more than half the sporting facilities in this country cannot make the cut even for an African, or even East African Olympics.