Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO) in Kenya is a major hub in Africa. However, as a state-owned entity, it has become a severely under-invested infrastructure asset. However, it remains a prominent airport on the continent.

In 2018, pre-COVID, the Kenyan gateway processed 7.04 million passengers and was the tenth busiest airport in Africa according to a Wikipedia ranking. The list also included gateways in European colonial island territories like the Canary Islands, Réunion, and Madeira that are regarded as part of the African continent. By 2023, NBO was still in tenth place with 8.2 million passengers, achieving year-over-year growth of 25.2%.

The Kenyan government has long had plans to privatize NBO. Since mid-2018, through state-owned Kenya Airports Authority (KAA), it had been discussing the handover of NBO to Kenya Airways (KQ), the country’s national carrier as part of a wider privatization of the then loss-making airline.

This would have happened through a so-called privately initiated investment proposal (PIIP). The deal included a 30-year management and operation contract through a separate holding company to which all of KAA’s NBO personnel would have transferred. However, by mid-2019, the PIIP was withdrawn by the airline.

In March 2024, Indian conglomerate Adani Group, through Adani Airport Holdings Limited, submitted a proposal for a 30-year build, operate, and transfer (BOT) project. Through a public-private partnership (PPP), Adani planned to invest approximately USD1.85 billion to upgrade and manage NBO, with ownership of the airport remaining with KAA.

To facilitate the project, Adani established a Kenyan subsidiary called Airports Infrastructure plc at the end of August 2024, according to a stock exchange filing. The entity is owned through a new UAE-based subsidiary, Global Airports Operator (GAO), which Adani set up a couple of weeks earlier. The company said that GAO was incorporated “for the purpose of making investments/acquisitions for the construction, operation, and maintenance of airports outside India.”

There was pushback against the project almost from the beginning from both the public and unions. The Law Society of Kenya, the country's top bar association, and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) also made a joint petition in September to the High Court. A month later, the court had temporarily blocked the project, and it was later scrapped by President William Ruto.  

Below, we look at what has happened since October and where the future lies for Kenya’s most important aviation asset.

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