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NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Nairobian

A tale of three airports, the gateways to three societies in Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya

Peter Kimani

By Peter Kimani | Oct 17, 2024

**Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi.** [File, Standard]

Now that our major airport, the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport has been placed under sale to the Indians, I have been noticing peculiar things about airports wherever I go.

First off, I know JKIA is one of the swankiest facilities in the continent, so I have no idea what it will look after the imaginary uplift by the Indian firm, Adani.

When I passed through Bole International Airport in Addis, where Raila Odinga aka Baba is seeking a job as the African Union boss, the facility resembled the Machakos country bus station on Christmas Day’s eve, when half the city shows up and seeks to squeeze into half a dozen buses.

The push and pull as crowds jostle through security screening, while peering through the screens to locate their boarding gates, all this while gasping for air, made me realise the joys that we experience at JKIA.

Accra’s major airport, the Kotoka International Airport is a different kettle of fish.

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It’s full of cool, clean air and lively staff who smile at you and serve you even faster, unlike JKIA staff who keep you waiting because a queue build-up avails opportunities for solicitation. I mean, nothing ever is accidental in Nairobi, the accidental supply depot that grew into a metropole.

What seized my mind—to use another term preferred by lawyers, now that I am still hallucinating from the Senate drama—is the name for whom the Accra airport is named. General Kokota was one of the men who overthrew Kwame Nkurumah in 1966, subverting the dream of democracy from taking root on the continent.

That was my understanding of Ghana’s past, from the snatches of readings that I could afford from Accra’s sketchy internet, but I suspect things are a lot more complex, as I discovered after a visit to Kwame Nkurumah’s Memorial Park in downtown Accra.

But I learnt a lot more about the Ghanaian society just by walking around.

The greed and avarice that roils our nation has not reached Ghana. Accra has a relaxed air to it. There are wide walkways and cycling lanes and the Chinese skyscrappers have not reached there either. Ghana is a place I’d happily live in.