Indian billionaire Adani is eyeing Kenya's main airport, and the govt is backing the deal. But are the official talking points factual?
- In defending the deal, Kenyan transport minister Davis Chirchir got the number and location of Adani's airports wrong, as well as the cost of Rwanda's new airport. He also underestimated the capacity of Kenya's main airport.
- Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura exaggerated the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport's passenger numbers, underestimated its cargo capacity and gave an unproven forecast for 2054.
- National assembly majority whip Silvanus Osoro is wrong about Rwanda's new airport: it's still under construction, the ownership split is 60-40 (not 90-10), and its passenger capacity won't outstrip other African airports.
On 11 September 2024, Kenya's main Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, or JKIA, was grounded for a day as aviation workers went on strike.
The workers were up in arms over the proposed takeover of the airport by Adani Airport Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate Adani Group, founded and chaired by billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani.
The strike followed months of public challenges to the deal, including on social media and in the senate. It is also being challenged in the Kenyan courts. Adani is defending its proposal.
Critics point to the Indian company's troubled history in Australia, widespread questions about its business practices and the lack of clarity about the Kenyan airport deal.
But officials deny that the airport is being sold. Transport minister Davis Chirchir said because the government could not afford to modernise the port of entry, it had to partner with a private company.
According to Chirchir, Adani will rebuild the airport and operate it for 30 years before handing it over to the Kenyan government.
"After 30 years, they have earned back their money, they hand [it] over to [the] government and move out," he said in a 12 September interview on Kenya's Citizen TV.
The much-publicised leaking roofs and power cuts at the airport prove that it needs to be "upgraded", government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura said in a lengthy explanation published on social media platform X.
The ruling party also defended the deal. Silvanus Osoro, the majority whip in the national assembly, cited competing airport projects in neighbouring Rwanda and Ethiopia in urging Kenyans to back the Adani deal.
"Mtu analeta DOO ZAKE awekelee KWETU,unateta. Sio eti anabeba airport!!I think TUMEROGWA," Osoro posted on X in Sheng, Kenya's urban slang.
Translated, this means: "Someone is bringing their own money to invest in our country, and you're complaining. It's not like he's taking the airport away. I think we're bewitched."
We took a closer look at the government's talking points, given the public interest in the issue.
Adani Airport Holdings Limited is responsible for managing the Adani Group's aviation investments, in particular the operation and development of airports.
Asked why no other private companies were invited to bid, Chirchir said Adani was "competent" in airport management.
"I don't know how many private companies run private airports like Adani runs maybe 14 airports around the world today," said Chirchir. "You seek opportunities to invest in the area of your competence, and Adani is in airports."
To date, Adani manages seven airports, in the Indian cities of Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram. One more airport, Navi Mumbai, is in development.
This is eight airports, all of them in India, not "around the world". -Tess Wandia
Osoro, the majority whip, made this claim as he urged Kenyans to back the controversial Adani deal.
He was referring to the airport Rwanda is building at Bugesera, south of the capital Kigali. It is expected to start operating in 2028.
Public-private partnerships are arrangements in which a government teams up with private companies to work on public projects. The government usually provides guarantees and other support, while the private company takes on some of the financing, construction or management.
In 2016, Rwanda partnered with Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil on the Bugesera project, with a 75-25 ownership split.
But in 2019, Rwanda bought Mota-Engil's stake, regaining full ownership, before entering into a new partnership with Qatar Airways, which acquired a 60% share, leaving Rwanda with 40%.
Osoro's claim of a 90-10 split is incorrect.
'Second to none'
His claim that Rwanda's new airport is "second to none" is subjective and would depend on factors such as passenger capacity, facilities and strategic value.
The Bugesera airport is expected to handle up to 14 million passengers a year.
In terms of passenger numbers alone, there are larger airports in Africa, such as Bole in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with 22 million passengers a year, Cairo in Egypt with 26 million passengers in 2023 and OR Tambo in Johannesburg, South Africa with 21 million passengers a year.
The majority whip was wrong on all counts - the airport is still under construction, the ownership split is 60-40 (not 90-10) and the passenger capacity, when fully complete, will not top all other African airports. - Grace Gichuhi
Chirchir, the Kenyan transport minister, claimed on Citizen TV that the Adani deal represented better value for money than Bugesera.
"The Bugesera Rwanda airport is a 14 million [passenger] capacity airport, at about what? US$1.3 billion? We're talking about a 30 million capacity airport, $1.8 billion [for the Adani JKIA plan]."
But was he on the money?
Rwanda's original 2016 deal with the Portuguese firm Mota-Engil was expected to handle 4.5 million passengers a year, at a cost of $818 million.
The subsequent deal with Qatar Airways was for a larger initial capacity of 7 million passengers a year, at a cost of $1.3 billion. This cost is included in Rwanda's 2021 national transport strategy.
Official figures show that the project has been allocated a higher figure of $1.7 billion for the 2022/23 financial year.
In 2024 news reports, Jules Ndenga, the chief executive of Aviation, Travel and Logistics (ATL), a government-owned company that manages aviation activities in Rwanda, put the cost at $2 billion.
The figure was then reported by, among others, US broadcaster CNN and Rwanda's New Times.
RwandAir, the country's national airline, also put the cost at $2 billion in the July-August 2024 issue of its in-flight magazine. In May RwandAir's chief executive Yvonne Makolo announced the new airport would be ready by 2028.
Rwanda's new airport will cost significantly more than the $1.3 billion claimed by Chirchir. - Dancan Bwire
The Kenyan government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura issued a statement claiming that "currently, the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport handles 8.6 million passengers annually".
The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) manages the country's airports and publishes corresponding statistics in its annual reports to the auditor general. The latest is for the 2022/23 financial year, which puts the number of passengers using all the airports in the country at 8.9 million.
According to provisional data from the national statistics agency, 8.2 million of these passed through the main airport in 2023.
We haven't seen any other publicly available data that puts the figure at 8.6 million, as Mwaura claims. Efforts to obtain his data sources were unsuccessful, as he did not respond to requests for comment.
Until he does, we rate the claim as exaggerated. - Tess Wandia
Chirchir, the transport minister, said JKIA has a capacity of 8 million passengers. Mwaura in turn put the capacity at 7.5 million.
What does the available data show?
In a 2015 environmental and social impact assessment report on a proposed new terminal, the African Development Bank (AfDB) noted that the airport's original 1978 design was intended to serve 2.5 million passengers a year.
That year, following the opening of a new terminal in May 2015, KAA reported that JKIA's annual passenger handling capacity had increased to 7.5 million passengers.
A 2017 AfDB report on a runway expansion project at the airport also put the capacity at 7.5 million passengers a year.
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In its 2023-2027 strategic plan, published in December 2023, Kenya's transport ministry stated that the airport's annual passenger handling capacity had increased from 7.5 million to 8.3 million passengers.
The minister's claim is an understatement, which may have the effect of increasing the perceived urgency of the deal. - Dancan Bwire
Mwaura, the government spokesperson, said the airport's capacity was projected to handle 32 million passengers and move a million tonnes of cargo by 2054.
But when contacted, Mwaura did not share his source for these projections.
We then checked the publicly available data. It is a Tower of Babel.
- In 2013, as part of its national development plan to 2030, the government announced the need to modernise and expand airport facilities to handle 45 million passengers a year.
- In 2015, amid plans for a new terminal, the AfDB projected that the airport would handle 18.5 million passengers and 901,000 tonnes of cargo a year by 2030.
- In 2016, the Kenya Airports Authority predicted that passenger numbers would reach 35 million by 2030.
- In 2022, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates aviation in the country, released figures showing that by 2030, JKIA would handle 11 million passengers and just over 700,000 tonnes of cargo.
- In June 2024, the Kenyan cabinet approved an investment plan for the JKIA, projecting that the country's airports would handle 42.1 million passengers by 2050. The cabinet cited a "national aviation policy" and the "JKIA medium-term investment plan", both of which are not yet publicly available.
We have not seen any other data to back up the spokesperson's claim, so we cannot prove whether the prediction was based on existing evidence. We rate the claim as unproven. - Makinia Juma
Mwaura said 367,000 tonnes of cargo passed through the airport in 2023.
According to the 2024 economic survey from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, cargo traffic in 2023 via JKIA was 372,248.7 tonnes, with another 591.5 tonnes in mail - parcels and packages -- traffic.
The data is provisional and sourced from the KAA. Mwaura's number is off by at least 5,000 tonnes. - Makinia Juma
