Because of an urban planning failure and a real lack of public transports, Kenyan people are daily stuck in a traffic jam. They begin as soon as one leave Nairobi’s airport, on a six-lane motorway. About an hour and a half is necessary to drive the 15km who separate the hub from the downtown. In Lagos, when an accident occurs, some drivers can be stopped for hours, and perhaps even an all day…
Toll highways and bridges have been built, however they do not manage to put an end to the traffic jams in African cities. From Kinshasa to Rabat, from Dakar to Abidjan, every African city seems to be subject to the traffic jam scourge. Given the upcoming demographic explosion, the situation becomes urgent.
In colonial times, the city of Nairobi had been built to host one hundred thousand people. The metropolis is now hosting about 4 million people… Public spaces are also poorly served. That is the reason why the real estate prices are rocketing at the centre of the Kenyan capital. Indeed, people who have financial means do not want to waste their time in the traffic jams every day. This lack of organization in the circulation is making the Kenyan state loose approximatively 570 000 dollars of productivity by working day. Local and national policies remain insufficient. If some construction works are planned, a new capital planning enabling to reduce traffic jams will take much time.
