No fire at Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport around November 2025
IN SHORT: According to a TikTok video, Kenya's main airport was on fire in November 2025. But the clip is a reupload of footage from a fire incident at the airport in February 2025. There is no evidence of another fire at the JKIA.
"JKIA AIRPORT ON FIRE," reads the caption to a video posted on TikTok around 24 November 2025.
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It shows a broad line of flames sweeping through what appears to be a large grassy or bushy area enclosed by a chain-link fence. In the distance, lights seem to outline an airport facility resembling the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), Kenya's main airport.
An on-screen narrator, speaking in a mix of English and Kiswahili, claims that JKIA is on fire and suggests the blaze was started deliberately. He links it to previous controversy over president William Ruto's reported plans to lease the airport to the Adani Group, implying the fire is part of a plot to advance those plans.
The video has over 184,000 views, more than 20,000 likes and over 1,300 comments.
Background: JKIA, the Adani lease, and the February 2025 fire
JKIA is Kenya's main international airport and one of Africa's busiest airports. In 2024, the government proposed leasing it to the Adani Group for 30 years in exchange for funding an expansion.
The plan sparked public outcry, and even a strike by airport workers. It was further challenged in court by the Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya Human Rights Commission. Despite public pressure, Ruto defended the deal, but later cancelled it in November 2024 after US prosecutors indicted the Adani Group's owner for fraud.
On 21 February 2025, a fire broke out in the grasslands surrounding JKIA. It was quickly contained, and airport operations continued uninterrupted. In the aftermath, some social media users and creators speculated that the fire was intentionally started to sell or lease the airport.
The new TikTok video claims another fire has broken out at JKIA, repeating the old claims. But is this true? We checked.
Video is a reupload of an old video about the February fire incident
First, if a major fire had broken out at Kenya's busiest airport, it would have been widely reported by news outlets and the authorities. There have been no such reports around November.
Second, the fire shown in the TikTok clip matches the February grassland fire near JKIA. A reverse-image search of keyframes shows strong similarities to footage from the 21 February JKIA incident.
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A keyword search on TikTok also shows that the same video was first uploaded on 21 February 2025 on a different account, which appears to be the narrator's channel.
The November 2025 upload appears on a different channel that hosts other videos by the same creator, suggesting they simply reuploaded their old footage.
This confirms that the late-November video is not evidence of a new fire but a repost of content from the February JKIA grassland fire.
The claim that the video shows a fire at JKIA around November is false.
