UN to spend Sh43b on renovation, construction of offices at Gigiri

The United Nations Office in Nairobi (UNON) will spend $340 million (Sh43 billion) on the construction and renovation of conference facilities and office blocks.

UNON Director General Mrs Zainab Bangura said the move is meant to build capacity for the complex to be able to host more UN agency offices, events and activities in the future.

Recently, it was revealed that three major UN agencies, including the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, are in the process of moving their headquarters from expensive Western cities to Nairobi.

“Yes, relocation is taking place, but not the UN headquarters as you may have heard. It’s just a number of operations of some agencies,” said Mrs Bangura during a press briefing and media tour at the UN headquarters at Gigiri.

“It’s Unicef and UNFPA who are moving some of their staff to Nairobi to make it easier to reach their areas of operations in Africa. Thanks to the same time zones, it will reduce the cost of operation and also utilise the already available land at the UNON.”

Director of Administration at UNON Chris Kirkcaldy noted that while more agencies are looking at financial challenges, Nairobi is part of the answer to those financial challenges.

“This is because Nairobi is a place where entities have found it quite a cost-effective place to do business and are therefore downsizing in places that perhaps are more expensive than Nairobi and placing offices in Nairobi to operate,” said Kirkcaldy.

Mrs Bangura said the expansion and renovation of buildings will increase capacity so that future large meetings can be hosted at the UNON. “We are building capacity so that if called upon, we will be able to host the conferences, but if we are called upon today, I can tell you we shall say no because we do not have the capacity,” said Mrs Bangura.

The work on the office side will involve renovation of existing blocks and construction of new ones to bring to about 25 blocks from the current 11, with the construction of more structures.

Stannah said already, six office blocks have been constructed. All are solar-powered and come with a lift and a rooftop working area. On the conference side, a new assembly hall with 1600 capacity will be constructed, increasing its ability to host meetings from the current 2,000 to 9,000 participants.

This would make Nairobi the third UN Secretariat location worldwide with such a hall, after Geneva and New York.

“Our member States, which include Kenya, obviously demand that we maximise use of assets they have invested in, and these are all ways to maximise the use of our facilities here,” said Stephen Stannah, Integrated Support Services Officer at UNON. “The fact that Nairobi is very well placed for any entities that are moving or looking to move here without any other significant investments.”

Stannah said by taking advantage of the climate and weather in Kenya, they intend to use outdoor spaces wherever possible, ensure maximum configuration of the spaces they have and take away dedicated space when people are not using it all the time.

“I think these are all ways to maximise the assets that we have and to ensure the funding the member states put into these projects is maximised,” he said.

Mrs Bangura said in addition to UNON’s primary purpose of hosting the formal meetings of the United Nations Headquarters, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the United Nations Human Habitat Assembly, it also has many agency-sponsored programmes on the compound.

“Those agencies also host their meetings here, and we understand that should the facilities be upgraded and modernised, there should be a lot more interest from those agencies to bring larger meetings,” she said.

According to the Principal Programme Management Office at UNON, Jack Howard, in other duty stations in New York and Geneva, the large assembly halls are often rented out for commercial events or private events and special concerts, cultural events, and they are aiming to do that here as well.

“We are fitting out the facility with a modern audio-visual system, and the actual acoustics and the shape of the hall would lend itself well to cultural events as well,” said Howard.

“But we also have several key business objectives. One of course is modernisation. The building is almost 50 years old, it’s in dire condition, and it needs to be modernised and made safe.”

The other reason for modernisation, he said, is to ease maintenance and operations to ensure long-term sustainability of operations over the 50-year cycle.

The works will also involve the construction of a new visitors’ lounge near the entrance gate, unlike now, where one has to go a long way to reach the lounge.

The UN complex in Nairobi sits on a 143-acre piece of land that was donated to it by President Jomo Kenyatta and hosts several United Nations agencies’ offices and staff.

It serves as the headquarters of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the United Nations Environment Programme, with UNON providing administrative, conference services, security and information services to these entities and to the resident coordinator system globally.

The UN is composed of 193 countries worldwide and has four headquarters duty stations in the world: New York (global headquarters), Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi (the only UN Secretariat headquarters in Africa and the Global South).