On a quiet afternoon in the new year, gunshots and
explosions rocked a hotel in the heart of Nairobi. The terror was another
deafening blow to the city’s business community.



The gunshots and explosions rang out first. As scores of
people fled the 14 Riverside complex in panic, others remained trapped within
its office blocks and inner buildings. At the DusitD2 hotel parking lot in
Nairobi, Kenya, vehicles burned violently. In the foyer, guests lay wounded,
only just surviving the horror of a suicide bombing. Outside, more gunshots as
the chaos intensified.



“We are under attack!” an unidentified employee within the
hotel building told Reuters in the early moments.



“We are still in [the] bathroom [&#8230;] gunshots in building,
please pray for us,” Ronald Ng’eno, a terrified civilian, tweeted from his
hiding place shortly after telling his family goodbye.



As the siege ended the next morning, confirmed by
Presidential address, the city began to take stock. Phone calls were exchanged
between friends and family. Companies within the complex set up hotlines for
those searching for their loved ones. At the nearby Chiromo mortuary, a tracing
desk was kept busy for those who needed more concrete answers.



This was not the first attack of its kind in Nairobi. In
2013, terrorists opened fire on unassuming shoppers at the Westgate Mall
resulting in an 80-hour assault that claimed the lives of 67 people. Over a
decade earlier, the American embassy in the capital was bombed in an explosion
that killed 213 civilians and wounded at least 4,000 others.



The latest incident, however, was perhaps the most
terrifying coming after a period of relative calm in the country. The hotel, a
popular venue for business meetings, was situated in the heart of the Riverside
complex that also housed the regional headquarters of major local and
international firms. 



The devastation, much like those of Westgate, will be felt
not only in human cost but in the economic losses that the country will likely
face. This, experts say, may have been the intention of Al-Shabaab, the
Al-Qaeda-backed Somali terror group that took credit for the insurgency.



Among Al-Shabaab’s economic victims are the small business
owners of the complex who, among their neighbors, will feel the biting losses
the most. 



Sam Omindo, founder of Genteel, a men’s tailoring brand that
was due to launch at the complex late January, was worried about starting
again.



&nbsp;“My plans have to
change and the arrangements that went into preparing for the launch are
technically null and void,” he says.



Genteel was a tenant of Metta, an entrepreneur’s club
located in the Belgravia building only a few feet behind the hotel. Originally
from Hong Kong, Nairobi was the club’s second site and an epicenter for
creative businesses in the city. It was also where Omindo met clients and
partners on a regular basis.



“I’m not too sure if people would still be comfortable
coming there&#8230;[this] means I’d have to look for an alternative somewhere
else,” he ruminates.



Beyond this, the fashion entrepreneur also finds himself
counting the cost of the attack on his fledgling business.



&nbsp;He estimates that
regrouping his enterprise would set him back a few thousand dollars, money that
he hoped to launch his business with.



Businesses like Omindo’s will continue to suffer in the
insecurity that follows the January attacks. Past incidents of terrorism were
found to decrease the country’s foreign direct investment significantly. In
2013, after Westgate, this was a 14% decline and investor confidence plummeted
due to fears around the security situation worsening.



Notwithstanding, the cost of doing business in Nairobi will
also rise. Insurance premiums after the mall shootings went up by about 40%
which translated to about 3% of annual revenues. At the time of going to print,
estimates on the costs of terrorism and political violence cover for local
businesses were yet to be established but were expected to follow a similar
trend.



What is known, however, is that for the coming months,
businesses at 14 Riverside will be slow to recover. At the time of publishing,
all of the over 40 businesses had closed their doors indeterminately with their
offices cordoned off as investigations continued.

nairobi

The cost of terror for Nairobi

As the rubbish built up on the rubble of Mogadishu’s wrecked streets, Ahmed Abdullah saw a business opportunity. 



He recruited a team of workers &#8211; many of them refugees from Somalia’s long conflict &#8211; and sent them out to collect plastic bags, bottles and wrappers to turn into roof tiles and other recycled goods.



“They cannot break, you see,” Abdullah said has he threw some of his tiles onto the floor to show their strength. “They are made of the recycled plastics and soil.”



Years of fierce fighting in the coastal city have destroyed its infrastructure and left the surviving buildings pocked with bullet holes.



The cash-strapped government is struggling to control a vast, divided country where Islamist militants from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group still launch regular attacks on the capital.



Regular rubbish collection is way down the state’s list of priorities.



“A lot of rubbish like plastics, paper bags &#8230; are thrown outside the city,” said Abdullah. When the piles get too big, he added, people start dumping it in the ocean.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="999" height="666" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-38741" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950.jpg 999w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 999px) 100vw, 999px" /><figcaption> Employees fill bags with shredded plastic litter to be made into roofing tiles at the Envirogreen recycling plant in Mogadishu, Somalia January 13, 2019. Picture taken January 13, 2019. REUTERS/Feisal Omar </figcaption></figure>



So, in June 2018, he and others founded their company, Green Plastic.



Muslimo Aden Ali said he gets paid 3,000 Somali shillings ($5.18) for every kg of waste he brings in.



“We carry the rubbish on our heads and backs. It is a nice job. We survive on this,” he said.



Maryan Abdullahi, a 35-year-old mother displaced by fighting, said she walks more than 10 km (7 miles) a day searching for plastic.



“I cannot sleep at night because of back ache but this is the only way I can raise food for my children.”



-Abdi Sheikh

RC1301B35D90

Somalis Turn a Profit by Transforming Their Scrap Plastic

The pursuit of Al-Shabaab militants by soldiers of the African Union and the Kenyan Defence Forces opened the country to a string of systematic retaliatory attacks that saw major tourist markets shy away.
The latest attack was the twin bombings in Nairobi’s sprawling Gikomba market in May that claimed the lives of 10 innocent Kenyans and left 70 others injured. This happened while Britain, France and Australia were busy evacuating their citizens from the coastal city of Mombasa. With every attack confirming just how porous Kenya’s security apparatus is, travel alerts are swiftly triggered.
The number of tourists from January to December in 2013 closed at 1.49 million – a 15.8% drop in comparison to the 1.7 million arrivals the year before. This further dims the hopes of ever attaining the Kenyan tourism ministry’s target of attracting 3 million visitors to Kenya’s parks, beaches and conservancies each year.
The tourism window earned east Africa’s biggest economy just over $1 billion in revenue during that period. Kenya can ill afford that figure dropping. And while the dwindling numbers are worrisome, the administration in Nairobi maintains it will not relent on its campaign against extremists.
Kenya’s main tourist source markets, including Britain, the United States, Italy, India and Germany, exhibited the biggest decline in numbers in 2013, however a quick glance at the arrival numbers from Africa shows signs of a market that has been long ignored and whose potential is yet to be fully realized. Uganda maintains its number one slot as an African source market for Kenya, bringing in 47,398 visitors in 2013 alone, followed by South Africa and Tanzania.
The introduction of a 16% value added tax levy on parks and conservancy fees in September by the Kenya Revenue Authority caused another bout of panic in an already fragile industry.
Fears were rife that the change would lead to a hike in the cost of hotel bookings and travel expenses; further discouraging European and western tourists that are still licking their wounds from the Eurozone crisis. It was not long before tourists voted with their feet, cementing many analysts’ assertions that the move to slap the industry with the extra levy was proof of the government’s doublespeak.
The lack of government involvement in the marketing of this vital sector is often a hot topic at many tourism workshops. Having just returned from a tourism indaba in South Africa, Minaz Manji, the managing director of Twiga Tours, who has operated in the East African tourism space for the past three decades, reckons that governments are doing very little to promote the tourism resource at their disposal.
In the 2014/15 budget estimates, the Kenyan government set aside $22.9 million for the tourism docket with $14.8 million going into recurrent projects and the balance for development. It is this figure that infuriates Manji and many other players in this space.
“How many billboards or TV adverts can you put in Europe or Asia when you only have $8 million for a whole year. Is this government serious?” asks Manji.
The obsession with the bush and the beach by East Africa’s tourism bodies, including the Kenya Tourism Board, has also come under sharp criticism. Players in the sector point to destinations like the Kremlin in Moscow. It attracts a million visitors every three months to sample its history, perhaps proof that diversifying tourism in Africa should quickly gain traction.
In recent months, international hotel chains like Hemingways, Best Western Premier and Villa Rosa Kempinski have set up shop in Nairobi while the New York Stock Exchange-listed hotel chain, Wyndham, plan to enter the Kenyan market at the end of the year. These developments have left 6 million spaces for Kenya’s tourism industry to fill, creating a lot of room to attract investors.
There are no quick solutions in the quest to save Kenya’s tourism sector, but there are low hanging fruits that would set it on the right track in the short term. Kenya needs to amend taxation laws to make it favorable for operators, increase funding for the promotion of tourism and look at developing joint regional marketing of the East African region to make it an attractive destination once again. All of this, however, can only be possible if Kenya successfully tackles the escalating terror threat.

Tempt Tourists Back

When Kenya decided to go to war against the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda terrorist group, al-Shabaab, it looked like a straightforward affair: go in with powerful hardware, smoke out these little irritants all the way to their port base of Kismayo and get back by Christmas. That was October. A month later, the Economist lamented that the Kenyans had spent more time tweeting than fighting.
Take for instance Afmadow, which fell to the joint force of the African Union and the Kenya Defence Forces in late May. This southern Somali town—al-Shabaab’s stronghold—should have been captured just days into the offensive: “Our troops are heading to Afmadow now, and we expect to capture it either today or tomorrow,” the head of a Somali militia collaborating with the Kenyan army told Britain’s Guardian on October, 18.
Just three days before al-Shabaab rebels abandoned Afmadow, allowing the African Union team a walkover, another stinging reminder of the cost of war hit Kenya. Police blamed the Islamist militant group for a blast in downtown Nairobi that killed at least one and left 35 injured. International news agencies reported on the blast with typical breathlessness and urgency. Both Mount Kenya University, the building next to the blast site, and Moi Avenue, where it happened, were trending worldwide on Twitter within minutes. For the outside world, more evidence that Kenya was unsafe, had just presented itself.
Britian’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the US Department of State both keep helpful guides on travelling around the world with updated travel warnings. “The US Department of State warns US citizens of the risks of travel to Kenya. US citizens in Kenya, and those considering travel to Kenya, should evaluate their personal security situation in light of continuing and recently heightened threats from terrorism…” stated the official website.
Kenya’s former colonial master, Britain, also advises “…against all but essential travel to within 60km of the Somali border (including Kiwayu and coastal areas north of Pate Island), to Garissa district…” on the FCO website. All the reconstruction work done by hard working Kenyan entrepreneurs and the government are rubbished within a single mouse click.
The country had little choice but to take al-Shabaab head on. In the months leading up to October, the militant group was responsible for a sequence of kidnappings and attacks in coastal areas of the country. When two Spanish aid workers were abducted, it was time for decisive action.
&nbsp;
Screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t
In 2011, Kenya earned about Ksh98 billion ($1.1 billion) from one of its largest foreign exchange sources—tourism. The notable take-away from this was that the increase from Ksh74 billion ($863.5 million) in 2010, was mainly because of improved arrivals from high spending Emiratis, Chinese and Indians. The traditional source markets of Europe and America were slowing down as the constant fear mongering by their governments took effect. Not that bureaucrats in Washington, London, Paris or Zurich are to blame, they are merely doing their job. The same way the Kenyan government is doing its best to secure homeland security.
Al-Shabaab has threatened to carry out more retaliatory attacks in Kenya’s highly populated urban centers within the next six months. The American ‘private contractor working for intelligence agencies’ warned, in a report in early June, that a huge attack against Kenya was imminent because of the increased Kenyan activity in Somalia.
What Kenya has on its hands is a perfect storm. Al-Shabaab continues to cause fear at home with their spontaneous attacks, the international community is afraid to visit or invest in the country because of the security concerns and everybody is on edge. If it were to pull out of Somalia before conquering the militant group’s Kismayo headquarters, there is no telling what harm they could do. If it continues advancing to the port town, just 115 kilometers from Kismayo, its people remain targets for retaliatory attacks. Either way, tourism suffers, investor confidence dampens and the economy slows. Just how costly is a march to Somalia?

Tag: Al-Shabaab

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The cost of terror for Nairobi

Somalis Turn a Profit by Transforming Their Scrap Plastic

Tempt Tourists Back

Kenya’s Long, Painful March To Somalia