AVIATION EAST AFRICA

INNOVATION: The Layman’s Guide to the Dreamliner - P28

EAST AFRICA

AIRPORTS ISSUE No. 0001 January 2012

TECHNOLOGY

INFRASTRUCTURE

KSh350 • USh10,080 • TSh6,570 • RF2,340 • BIF4,780 • USD4

PPPs IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AIRPORTS - P10

TAXI TO AIRPORT, BRINGING AIR TRAVEL TO THE MASSES - P40

Lord of the

Skies

Meet Andrew, Lord Enniskillen, nobleman, aviator, and pioneering aviation entrepreneur - P64

COVER PHOTO | JONATHAN KALAN

Kenyan

INSIDE EA FLYER: Eco-Tourism Gives Ex-Poachers a New Chance P58

Contents January 2012

P10 P48 P18 Editorials | Aviation East Africa .......................................................... 7 Industry Analysis: Public Private Partnerships............ 10 Airport Review: Kilimanjaro International Airport...... 18 Feature : Dreamliner....................................................... 28

P34

Dispatches | Letter from New York ...................................................... 34 Letter from Australia ...................................................... 36 Letter from Kampala ...................................................... 38 Letter from South Africa ................................................. 40 Legal Opinion .................................................................. 42 Business Briefs | Emirates Fleet Order....................................................... 44 Precision Air IPO.............................................................. 46 Baldwin’s Apology............................................................ 48 EA FLYER | Environmental Notebook............................................... 58 Traveller’s Tales................................................................ 80 Foreigners........................................................................ 85 Big Ideas Forum............................................................... 88 Event of the Month.......................................................... 94 Essay................................................................................. 96

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Welcome January 2012

The Voice of the Region’s Aviation Business Sector

Editorial

T

By Aviation East Africa Chairman Eric Mwandia

A Media Hub for Business, Market Intelligence and Service Delivery

he Executive, Editorial and Advertising teams at Aviation East Africa magazine welcome you to the region’s first quality publishing venture devoted to the sector and urge you to become a regular reader, interactive contributor and advertiser.

We at AEA are dedicated to publishing excellence in a field where the sky is both metaphorically and literally the limit.

In launching this magazine, we are aiming high indeed – to provide and share information between aviation industry players and users of aviation services and resources in a timely, informative, enlightening, entertaining and interactive manner that is unprecedented in our region.

This monthly publication will offer its readers outstanding features, news and analyses presented in a striking style and to the highest standards of writing, photography, display advertising and design.

AEA will combine aviation industry interests with a separate embedded magazine that can be read as a standalone publication dedicated to two of the world’s most aviation-specific activities and markets – travel and leisure – EA Flyer. This magazine will be written, designed and delivered to be of compelling interest to both the holidaymaker and the provider of tourism services and products.

As an information and services provider, our targeted editorial features

lysis | IndustryAna

will be packed with information, data, business aviation intelligence and knowhow, sourced from the region and the wider world, for both the professional and the very well informed layman.

And, as you can see from our inaugural Cover Story and other content, Aviation East Africa’s interviews will be with individuals and institutions that represent the best of the aviation sector in this region, offering expert opinion, analyses, diagnoses and prognoses.

Our cover stories reflect a passion for all things aviation.

Our first Cover Story, “Private Public Partnerships and Airports”, by Eric Mwandia includes a wide-ranging interview by AEA Special Correspondent Jonathan Kalan with Kilimanjaro Airport CEO Marco van de Kreeke, who runs an airport that owes much of its success to a pioneering PPP interval. Our advertising features will address the region’s

Partnerships Public Private

PPPs in theent Developm of Airports form ledged to outper is generally acknow capacity The private sector of technological to rpart in the areas its public counte cy and capacity human skills, efficien tic combination and innovation, sful symbio succes a But ces. ing in mobilize resour rs all round, includ er can work wonde of both sectors n East Africa Publish ry, argues Aviatio the aviation indust ERIC MWANDIA 10 |

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has ately the media stories been awash with ents in about governm huge East Africa touting ent airports developm Bugesera hear of the We projects. in Rwanda; Airport project International ld airport new green-fie of Nairobi’s si. terminal in Embaka talk of even been There has Taveta, airports in Narok, international

The Voice of the Region’s Aviation Business Sector

Editorial

A Media Hub for Business, Market Intelligence and Service Delivery aviation business and information and data needs, providing a platform and showcase like none other.

Our vision and mission are fused together – to be the premier aviation journal in our region, which encompasses the East African Community nations of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and a catchment area extending to the Great Lakes Region, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

Our product is a niche publishing venture whose content will be delivered to world class standards 12 times a year.

We will be your eastern African hub for aviation news, market intelligence and business resources.

As well as being a good read and a photographic feast for the eyes, Aviation East Africa magazine aims at serving as one of the most striking and effective advertising platforms in eastern Africa.

Based in Nairobi, the regional business and communications hub, AEA is the right magazine, in the right place at the right time.

Our advertising rates are eminently competitive and great value for money (see the detailed rate card elsewhere in this inaugural edition). On the AEA advertising platform, you will attract, for your service, product or innovation, the attention of, and reach the players and decision makers who really matter.

We will herald as well as chronicle developments in the aviation and affiliated fields, aviation-specific and cross-cutting issues and showcase the best as well as offer a platform where solutions, innovations and ways forward are thrashed out in a great multifarious and multifaceted conversation.

Our typical reader is knowledgeable in current affairs and interested and involved in aviation and many of the sectors it serves, including his or her own area of specialization.

This magazine was conceived of and is executed to be read consistently by industry players and professionals and decision makers as a primary source for

aviation industry and business news, current events and general information and data in the region.

The aviation sector in the East Africa region has been growing at an unprecedented rate in terms of passenger numbers, infrastructure and cargo.

This has created a large and growing community of stakeholders, including government corporations, international organizations, businesses and industry professionals, but no multimedia forum that addresses their sector’s specific, even specialized, media publicity and advertising needs.

The aviation sector is a specialized industrial sector with its own set of mainly international regulations, industry specific technologies and even its own jargon. Aviation East Africa intends to serve this community of professionals and corporations with information and news that directly relate to and impact on their sector in a knowledgeable and even expert way.

This magazine will research the background of developing stories and sector issues in a comprehensive yet eminently readable way. Data and information will be analyzed and presented in the most impactful manner, both narrative and visual.

Our experienced team of journalists, both local and international, will deliver quality and responsible journalism.

Our advertising team will work closely and symbiotically with clients to deliver news and information on companies that provide aviation-specific and, or -affiliated services in both the sector and all other sectors, right across the region.

The field of aviation publishing is as niche as a niche gets and we have endeavoured to place a world-class product in your hands and at your service. Compelling editorial content written and presented by experienced writers, photojournalists and editors from the region and around the world is accompanied by an advertising platform that is guaranteed to grow.

Our vision and mission are fused together – to be the premier aviation journal in our region, which encompasses the East African Community nations of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and a catchment area extending to the Great Lakes Region, South Sudan and Ethiopia

The Voice of the Region’s Aviation Business Sector

From our two Cover stories – the PPP feature on Kilimanjaro Airport in the main magazine, Aviation East Africa and the Big Interview with aviation pioneer Lord Enniskillen in EAFlyer – to our Business Briefs, Letters from six cities around the world and the Foreigners, Big Idea and Serengeti special features, we offer you a monthly magazine like none other under one roof on the eastern African publishing scene.

The Letters, Foreigners, Business Briefs, Technology, Conservation and Environment, Flying Green and Big Idea features will be regulars as will two Cover stories with every issue of Aviation East Africa and EAFlyer.

The infrastructure and management superstructure feature in Aviation East Africa focusing on the PPP phenomenon is only the first of many other such specialized treatments of this subject in our region.

The fine balance we have struck with the infrastructure and development Cover Story in Aviation East Africa and the human-interest lifestyle Cover Story in EAFlyer will become a regular valueadding feature and resonant signature of the AEA/EAf monthly package from our publishing hangar.

Whatever your segment of the sector and its affiliated sectors – from aircraft, avionics, accessories and equipment to parking, hotels, lodges, national parks, supermarkets and specialist shops – these twin magazines give you a distinctive voice in the multimedia sector. Writing

about aviation for both a specialist and a general audience is no mean feat and has rarely been seriously attempted in our region, with the result that eastern Africans interested in all matters aviation resort to South African and other publications and websites, where mention of our region is only occasional.

Writing long before man could fly, one of history’s greatest polymaths, Leonardo da Vinci, remarked: “Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven — that is by letters written with their quills”.

Soaring prose poetry indeed, and penned by one of the earliest geniuses to have conceived of mechanical human flight. The spirit in which da Vinci wrote is one which recognizes that human imagination and creativity move faster, higher, farther and ahead of their times than any other factor.

The speed of thought and of the imagination surely exceeds that of light.

Editorially speaking, that is the twinspirit of Aviation East Africa and EA Flyer.

Welcome aboard Aviation East Africa and join us on a voyage into the future of the sector in our region.

Eric Mwandia For PAMC

How to get in touch Phone

Email

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AVIATION EAST AFRICA Woodley, Ngong Road Box 636 - 00100 GPO Tel: +254 020 8019387 Email: sales@aviationeastafrica.com

www.aviationea.com

Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven — that is by letters written with their quills” Leonardo da Vinci

IndustryAnalysis |

Public Private Partnerships

PPP – Public Private Partnership Definition A cooperative venture between the public and private sectors, built on the expertise of each partner, that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of resources, risks and rewards – The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships

PPPs in the Development of Airports The private sector is generally acknowledged to outperform its public counterpart in the areas of technological capacity and innovation, human skills, efficiency and capacity to mobilize resources. But a successful symbiotic combination of both sectors can work wonders all round, including in the aviation industry, argues Aviation East Africa Chairman ERIC MWANDIA 10 |

L

ately the media has been awash with stories about governments in East Africa touting huge airports development projects. We hear of the Bugesera International Airport project in Rwanda; of Nairobi’s new green-field airport terminal in Embakasi.

There has even been talk of international airports in Narok, Taveta,

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

The partnerships are a continuum depending on the degree of private sector involvement in terms of resources and risks.

Kigali International Airport, be at the same time planning in addition for a completely new airport the size of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport? Similarly, JKIA itself is in the throes of a massive expansion, so why would the authorities be looking at creating a new and much larger facility nearby?

This growth is not just restricted to Africa. Indeed, the growth of air travel and related infrastructure is even higher in Asia and South America.

Nakuru and Thika. In Tanzania, there are advanced plans for a massive expansion and refurbishment of the major airports across the country.

Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa is also in the middle of phased expansion. The list, it seems, is endless.

So what is going on here? For example, why would Rwanda, already currently significantly upgrading

Behemoth

To take a hyperbolic example not too far away, whilst we all marvel at the huge Dubai Airport, recently completed and reportedly handling up to 4-5 million passengers a month, apparently there are plans under way to build a new terminal with a capacity of 160 million passengers per annum, a veritable behemoth.

In tandem with the growth in

Similarly, JKIA itself is in the throes of a massive expansion, so why would the authorities be looking at creating a new and much larger facility nearby

�

airports there is a burst of growth among East African airlines, with each of Air Uganda, Rwandair and Kenya Airways announcing ambitious growth plans.

For example, Kenya Airways expects to increase passenger numbers five-fold from the current six million to 30 million by 2015.

That is true ambition.

Surely this is all not just hot air or are we into another period of constructing white elephants with governments trying to out do each other to massage inflated national egos?

To illustrate the answer to this we need to go back 40 years ago.

Kenya had just been awarded the headquarters secretariat of the new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the first time a UN headquarters was located in the developing world. One of the key Turn to P12 January 2012

| 11

IndustryAnalysis |

Public Private Partnerships

From P11

draws of Nairobi was location (in marketing, as they say, it is location, location, location), but to add value to that Nairobi then had something quite remarkable for a Third World African country – a working infrastructure.

The roads had not yet gone to pot.

The Moi era and its depredations were still years into the future. Of course now infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure has become the mantra for development planners, a key driver in the surge for progress and the growth of our nations. Kenya was ahead of the curve. A key part of of this working infrastructure was Kenya’s connectedness to the world by both telecoms and by air transport.

Indeed this connectedness eventually enabled Kenya during that time to build a thriving economy as a major tourist, conference and diplomatic hub.

So we see that air connectivity, good airports, good airlines, are useful if not essential for nations such as the East African countries that have got ambitions in development.

But we also know that our nations are not only living from hand to mouth, we also know that they need a massive dollop of assistance from donors to stay on course.

Billions

So where will the money come from to build these massive airports?

Indeed, some of these projects require gigantic investment by any standards; for example, it is estimated that to build JKIA from scratch at current rates it would cost in the order of billions of dollars.

With all our competing requirements to provide other essential services to our citizens, it is unlikely that our government will have such sums to spare.

What to do? Well, what does a business do when it needs to finance a project? If we do not have adequate internal funds, then we must borrow.

But, as we all know, every business and country has a limit to its borrowing capacity.

Borrow too much and soon the debts overwhelm the countries’ capacity to pay. A quick look at Greece will show what sort of turmoil can result from overextending your country with too much borrowing.

Clearly every internally generated shilling and every borrowed shilling

12 |

With all our requirements to provide essential services, it is unlikely that our government will have such sums to spare

”

has many too many competing needs for which it is required. But there is another option. To illustrate this let’s consider the situation in some other sectors, Education and Health, for example.

No government, developing and developed, has the capacity to meet all the education and health requirements of every one of its people. Thankfully, there is the private sector. A large share of the capacity needs of these sectors is actually delivered by the private investor.

Of course neither a university nor a hospital is anywhere near an airport in terms of scale and complexity, but really this just a question of quanta.

Taken as a whole, the participation of the private sector in health and in education is quite impressive, albeit made up of a large number of small quanta.

Growth

Well, it is really not very different in aviation and certainly private money has already done very much to uplift the rate of airline growth. One need only look at growing airlines such as Kenya Airways, Precision Air, Air Uganda, Jetlink and others, some of which have shown remarkable growth.

But how does the interested investor get involved in the construction of airports?

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

The Wherewithal Factor So where will the money come from to build these massive airports?

Indeed, some of these projects require gigantic investment by any standards; for example, it is estimated that to build JKIA from scratch at current rates it would cost in the order of billions of dollars.

With all our competing requirements to provide other essential services to our citizens, it is unlikely that our government will have such sums to spare.

The private sector is generally acknowledged to outperform its public counterpart in the areas of technological capacity and innovation, human skills, efficiency and capacity to mobilize resources.

Whereas it may be quite obvious that the profit motive has allowed the private sector to hone its efficiency and to make better use of the available technological and scientific capital, it may not be so clear to an East African that a company is capable of mobilizing financial resources better than our own governments.

The reality is that, in contrast to the situation in Africa, where the government is the driver of the economy, in developed nations it is

the private sector that controls the lion’s share of the economy. It is the private sector that the banks trust to manage financial resources best.

Finance, technology, superior human resources and efficiency, these do indeed present powerful factors for the effective implementation of successful large scale-projects. And what would the investors want in return?

As always, investors will invest their money where they can get a good financial return. The attraction of the return is a function of the length of the period during which the investor is licensed to operate the completed Turn to P15

January 2012

| 13

Public Private Partnerships PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

From P13

facility (good international practice now limits the duration an investor is given to recoup his investment to not more than 30 years) and the level of fees that he is allowed to charge.

Here then is the primary conflict that must be resolved – the investor is driven by the profit motive and wishes to charge as high fees as possible to maximize profit, whereas the government is concerned (usually) with the benefit of its citizens and requires that services be made available at reasonable quality and price.

Access

In a sense the problem is less acute in the development of an airport than, say, the case of the construction of a toll road. If one charges too exorbitantly for use of a toll road, the poorer users will not be able to use it and it is the already privileged who will further benefit.

This is an inversion of government’s natural wish to favour the less advantaged and close the gap in access to resources. In airports, the burden is a lot lighter and it is likely to be shouldered by the corporate organization and the already privileged anyway, a kind of luxury tax, a pay-per-use mode. Air travel, unlike road transport, is usually not subsidized anyway and users already have to pay the full price. An efficient private facility may actually end up cheaper for the end-user.

In the end though, investors do not build facilities for just anyone.

The investor will take a long hard look at the country, its governance culture and its economy.

The cost of financing and the end services is heavily dependant on perceived risk. He needs to know that, indeed, 20 years from now he will still be peacefully recouping and profiting from his investment, that the country is stable, that his contract is enforceable and that the new lot of ministers in the next government is not going to going to shake him down for handouts under some dodgy pretences. On this score

several East African countries may need to do a lot of convincing to the PPP investor.

Nevertheless investors have shown a certain appetite for investing in infrastructure. Recently, the Nairobi Motorway Group, a special vehicle company, and consortium Strabag of Austria and the huge Israeli construction company, Housing & Construction Holding (HCH), Israel’s largest infrastructure company, contemplated a multibillion dollar undertaking to build toll roads in Nairobi that only became unstuck when it was effectively blocked by the private sector arm of the World Bank.

Partnership

Public Private Partnership (PPP) is the name given to the partnerships between private investors and government entities.

These partnerships can have varying levels of participation in terms of finance, risk and ownership by the two parties (see box).

Are there any examples of PPP development of airports in East Africa? Well, private investors have been crucial over the years to the growth of Wilson Airport, which grew at one time to become the busiest airport in Africa in terms of aircraft movements, even though most of the aircraft using the airport are small, classified for purposes of general aviation.

Turn to P16

January 2012

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IndustryAnalysis |

Public Private Partnerships PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

From P15

And then there is the JKIA Cargo Centre. This Centre is currently the largest aviation cargo hub in Africa. Most of its capacity has been developed by private investors.

In Tanzania, even before the Government created the Tanzania Airports Authority, it boldly decided to hand over for private development and management the country’s second airport, Kilimanjaro International Airport to a new specialpurpose company, the Kilimanjaro Airport Development Company (KADCO).

Kilimanjaro

Our correspondent Jonathan Kalan gives his impression of the airport in another story in this issue and interviewed the KIA Managing Director at length for our inaugural Cover Story.

The shareholders included Mott Macdonald, the South African Infrastructure Fund, Interconsult and the Tanzania Government. At KIA, the investors exited and the Government used its preemptive rights to acquire 100% shareholding in the company. This puts KADCO in the same type of structure as the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), a private company with minority private shareholding, the bulk of the shares held by the South African Government.

Nevertheless, the KADCO

16 |

experience provides some useful insights on the utility of PPPs as a solution to airports development.

In Nigeria the local terminal of Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MM2), Lagos, is run by a private company, BiCourtney Limited.

Of course, all this is a far cry from the proposed green-field Build Own Operate model proposed for some of Burgisera and Nairobi’s New Greenfield terminal.

Nevertheless over 50 major airports worldwide are managed by private companies. Some of these airports were actually developed as green-field projects by private

companies.

A prominent example of this is Bangalore Airport in India.

If our planners are determined to go the whole PPP route they may need to go quite far to learn all the lessons, but, as we have seen, we don’t need to get unnecessarily concerned or vexed about the issue, there is a cultural track record in Kenya and elsewhere in the region of private sector participation in the development of the aviation sector.

The terminology maybe new and the application more intense, but this track record puts us in good stead to manage these projects confidently and successfully.

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AirportReview |

Kilimanjaro International Airport

So says MARCO VAN DE KREEKE, the Dutch expatriate Managing Director who first arrived at Kili on September 11, 2001, in this wide-ranging interview with Aviation East Africa Special Correspondent JONATHAN KALAN in which Public/Private Partnerships (PPPs) are analyzed with reference to the strategic management choices that have faced one East African airport over the past decade

‘Kilimanjaro Airport probably one of the best in the industry’ AVIATION EAST AFRICA: Could you tell us your professional background?

VAN DE KREEKE: Actually I have an engineering degree in agriculture; agricultural land use planning. We have to plan our land use to the square metre of course. With that degree, I came to work at an airport right after I graduated. The airport wanted to expend building the runway et cetera, so we were in the middle of all kinds of environmental impact procedures and all that Q: Where did you study?

A: I studied in Boston University.

In the agricultural world it’s quite renowned, but, of course you’ve probably never heard of it. I then

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did some airport runway work in Maastricht in the southern parts of the Netherlands; a small regional airport. So I rose into more managerial positions. After a number of years I managed to run the company…

Q: You started in the runway?

A: I started more or less in the planning department, planning the extension of the airport as a project manager and as the positions came up, moved to managerial positions. So working for about seven other years and then I went to work abroad for a number of years. So this environment network, this opportunity came up – to be the airport manager of Kilimanjaro Airport. Kilimanjaro Airport had privatized just a number of years before then and somehow

during privatization, they had chosen to have a Dutch, given the airport management, they had been used to having a Dutch airport manager and although they didn’t continue the contract with Emson Airport because they were way too expensive, they continued to look for a Dutch professional somehow in that same network and that’s when they found me. I had never been in Africa and not knowing anything about the continent, I packed my bags and left for Kilimanjaro Q: Which year was this?

A: This was 2001. The day I got my contract was September 11. It’s a weird day to get your contract to work in an airport, because a lot of things changed and being an airport

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

manager, more or less the operations manager at the airport, a lot of things for me changed as well. So those years, I was really involved with the operations side of the airport; airport operations, security et cetera.

takes your bag, when the plane lands, they clean and load and offload, they make flight plans. All the logistics around flying, that’s done by a handling company and I managed that company in Maastricht

Q: And what were your qualifications to be an airport manager, based on the work you had done with the other airports?

What was the level of things you were working on previously?

Q: What was the name of that company?

A: In the airport I worked before in Maastricht I was a project manager, then I managed as general manager in the handling company at the airport. They more or less take care of the logistics at an airport. So when, as a passenger, you come to an airport, somebody checks you in,

A: Master Handling Company.

So I had quite a lot of knowledge of airports of course and the number of years of managerial experience, same kind of size.

That company was about 100 people and over here there were about 150. I guess they thought I was qualified enough to do the job.

I got a two-year contract and when that ended, I went back to Holland.

Also found a lady, who’s now my

wife, so we decided to move back to Holland.

Q: You met her here or in Holland?

A: I knew her before but when living here – she still lives and works as an airhostess in KLM and so on her flights over here, she would say, ‘hey I’m in Tanzania’ and so we would meet and one thing led to another.

But it seemed at the time that it would be a lot easier to move back, so we did. I did a few small jobs in Holland but quite sooner, I got to talk to an airport in de Privy. I don’t know if you ever heard of the Netherlands Antilles, a group of islands in the Dutch colony. One of those islands Turn to P20 January 2012

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AirportReview |

Kilimanjaro International Airport

From P19

was also looking for a manager for the airport. So I got to talk to them. It took a long time; it took about eight months from when I first talked to them to when I got a contract there.

But that was my next thing and it was quite nice. Small Island, 15,000 people – so it was a small village, but an interesting airport. It was the technical stop for KLM flights into South America. So their flights to Peru and to Ecuador make a technical stop first and then move on. Four KLM flights a day really in a village with 15,000 people, that was quite interesting Q: Was it more laid-back than Tanzania?

A: I wouldn’t say it’s more laidback, Tanzania is laid-back; a lot easier for us. The official language in that island is Dutch. Most of the people at the airport, my managers, were actually educated in Holland.

They had their higher degrees and college degrees in Holland. So it was a lot easier to relate and to function and also there was a large European Dutch community. But socially it was easy and yes it was a laid back, nice life.

So we worked there later for three years. My youngest daughter was born there, it was good luck. But after three years, it was time to move on again and I immediately landed at an interim job at the airport I worked for before Maastricht. They had a bit of a managerial problem and needed an interim manager so I moved back there because I was looking for a job. The difficulty about this kind of life and this kind of job is I work on contracts, so there is no security for work Q: Is there a lot of jobs available in your position?

A: No, and especially not abroad as an expert. Let’s face it; more developed countries will have their own people who will develop into the job so looking for expert managers is not very tough, as opposed to countries like this where it’s more difficult to find the right people.

So came back to Maastricht, worked there for a little bit more than a year and then, through my networks, I heard that they were looking for a managing director at

20 |

Kilimanjaro Airport. I very officially formally applied, went for two rounds of interviews, finally got the job and then decided to pack up again and leave for Tanzania. It was a big step because by then there were four of us, the first time I was alone, but now there’s four of us: To back up and move to Tanzania, quite a step.

Q: What year was that?

A: That was 2009, two-and-a-half years ago.

Q: So then you ended up here?

A: I then ended up here, where I still am, this time as the Managing Director.

Q: Is it a short contract or is it a longer one?

A: Again, a three-year contract, so it will end mid- next year.

Q: So tell me a little bit about Kilimanjaro Airport Development Company.

A: KADCO was founded in 1998.

There was a wave of privatization really in Tanzania. Privatization was the hard thing to do. I think it was the breweries, the banks, Kilimanjaro Airport and at some point, not much later, it was Air Tanzania, although they didn’t call it privatization. They would say Partnerships with the Private Sector.

Also this privatization of Kilimanjaro Airport, the partners

were Mott McDonald, which is a British consultancy firm who held the majority of shares, South African Infrastructure Fund, now Brian Macquarie Group, which is very well known in the aviation industry because they own and manage a number of airports, there was a local entrepreneur from Dar es Salaam (InterConsult Ltd, a Tanzanian engineering firm) who held a small share and 30 per cent shares were still held by the Tanzanian Government.

They took over management of the airport on a concession; let’s say a rental agreement for 25 years. They hired Dutch airport management and more or less, in those first couple of years, reorganized the airport and did a lot of cosmetic improvements to the airport.

It was hard days; I came here in 2001, so I know a little bit of that history. The company then existed for two or three years. Passenger numbers were just over 200,000 per year and in such an industry, that’s small, it’s very small.

As a government rolling industry and a difference, of course, of locations and local environment, as a rule you would say an airport below a million passengers per annum is very difficult to run on a profitable basis.

The investments in hardware, in the runway, the building and all the equipment you have runs into the millions and to earn enough on airport operations, to start paying for those costs, you need to have a certain volume and of course those costs don’t go up when the volume goes up.

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

They found a buyer, a British company called Omniport.

Omniport runs a number of airports, among which is Norwich Airport in the UK. The Tanzanian Government however had to approve that sale from the private shareholders to this new private shareholder. It was very hesitant to do that and after some time of negotiations, about two years, the private shareholder became a little bit impatient, put some pressure on the situation, after which the Tanzanian Government decided to take back the shares, buy the shares being sold by the shareholders, to be able to choose themselves what to do with KADCO and who the new partner would be.

Q: So this happened in 2004 or when was that?

So you need a minimum base point and 200,000 is way too low.

Twenty-four is the number of years this airport company operated at a loss. Still I think quite a lot of things improved, but it was hard work.

Traffic grew quite well and a number of improvement projects have been done in the meantime and overall communication equipment, standby generators for the whole airport that were installed, but a lot of that was done with either grants or soft loans from the World Bank and European Investment Bank Q: How did it come to be run back up? What was the situation before?

Was the airport doing well, was it doing bad, was it okay? There was a wave of privatization. How did it sort of come about then?

A: It’s a very good question and difficult for me because I wasn’t there in those days. Why KADCO, why Kilimanjaro Airport was chosen to be privatized, there is no documentation and there is very few people who can tell the story.

I know more or less the founding fathers, or a group of British entrepreneurs who had connections to the major shareholder, which is Mott Macdonald; I know one of them grew up here in Tanzania. I think his father in the colonial era was a District Commissioner.

He grew up here, had a dream about moving back to Tanzania, doing business and it was in the aviation industry. So, as far as I can recall, but this is not the official history

of the airport, he made everybody enthusiastic for the plan to privatize Kilimanjaro Airport.

Probably at the same time, that is one of the problems of this privatization. A contract was made; concession agreement was made whereby the Government gave this airport to the private parties to operate at a certain annual concession fee which wasn’t very high. It was more or less a symbolic fee, which made sense because the airport would run a loss, everybody knew.

But I think the expectations of everybody around this company, the Government and the public, was to see a lot of large investments in the airport and in the company which private parties were very hesitant to do because it was already running at a loss and the choice to put millions into a company which you wouldn’t recover that investment for the next decade or so, was a difficult choice to make.

So I guess, in their initial agreement, they had not made very clear who was responsible for which investments. The infrastructure was given to KADCO as a symbolic fee. It’s an interesting question of course, who was responsible for the maintenance of all that infrastructure.

Is that the owner giving it out at a single rent, or is it the tenant who takes over 25 years and then has the obligation, the responsibility to maintain the infrastructure? And I guess they never agreed, which led to a decision by the four shareholders to step out. This was not their cup of tea. They wanted to sell their shares.

A: Probably the idea to sell the shares started in 2007 and in 2009, they came to an agreement to sell back the shares to the Government. I was actually hired by the Board of Directors, which was still persistent on the kind of chairman they were looking for.

Q: So, for a time, the shares were bought back by the Tanzanian Government and it was no longer a partnership anymore?

A: That is still the case. September 2009, the majority of shares were bought back by the Tanzania Government and the situation lasts until today. Early 2010, the Government also bought back the small share of the local Tanzanian entrepreneur that I mentioned before. So the Government [for] two years now, owns again 100 per cent of the shares of KADCO. Q: So you mentioned one of the difficulties that it was unclear who would invest and who would maintain and so that was one of the challenges. What are some other difficulties that you experienced in the initial years you were here with the publicprivate partnerships?

A: Just after the Government bought back the shares, there was a lot of talk about this and people were referring to it as the failure of the Turn to P22

January 2012

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AirportReview |

Kilimanjaro International Airport

From P21

privatization of Kilimanjaro Airport.

And I reacted to that a number of times, saying, “I think that we cannot call this privatization a failure.

On the contrary, I think if you talk to people in the Tanzanian aviation industry maybe even the East African aviation industry, they will all agree that Kilimanjaro Airport is probably one of the best maintained and best running airports in the industry, so this privatization I think was a success. However, the ultimate goal of seeing private investments in that airport infrastructure did not succeed, did not happen. And why was that? It’s a financial model. It has to be financially viable, of course, for private industry to invest.

So, what was the challenge, probably the only challenge, the airport was simply too small, the volume at the airport was too small and therefore the income was too small to generate enough money to do major investments. We were growing out of that situation really.

On a personal note, I left the airport in 2003, I came back in 2009 and, in the meantime, traffic had doubled.

In six years’ time, traffic had doubled. Even in 2009 and 2010, when the whole world actually went down and a lot of airports saw their traffic going down, we remained stable at least and this year we seek to harness growth in the international passenger numbers we grow again by 50 per cent, which is to double again in six years’ time.

On domestic traffic, we’ve increased by 70 per cent just because we take a lot of traffic from Arusha Airport which has had some problems over the last year.

I said that passenger numbers in 2001 when I came here were just over 200,000. We’ll probably reach 650,000 this year. So it’s a tremendous growth in a number of years and we are slowly getting to a point where we will be able to stand on our own feet and then it is also very viable to look of course for another public-private partnership, because it is interesting for the private industry to invest in something that will make money.

And that’s the key thing. It must be interesting; the private industries will not throw money away. They might have a long-term view and they might be interested to invest in airport infrastructure, but there must be a possibility to make money in the

22 |

it’s just a more sensible model to run a niche company but also to run an airport. I’m not sure about the US airports.

A lot of them are still governmentowned. In Europe, at least the airport authority is more or less a standalone, entity being stateowned. Amsterdam Airport, for example, which usually ranks among the top three airports in the world in terms of quality and it’s the third or fourth largest airport in Europe, and it’s state-owned.

The City of Amsterdam owns the majority of shares, but they run it as a company. They are getting a profit, which is good.

How airports were run here in Tanzania, except for Kilimanjaro Airport, and are still run, is through one government organization, which is the Airport Authority.

Q: This was set up after KADCO could come about?

long run, of course, and that is the key element.

Q: You mentioned the growth of traffic to almost 650,000; definitely an acknowledgeable achievement. What are some other acknowledgeable achievements you’ve had in that span of time at the airport?

A: Well, like I said, I think we are recognized by the aviation industry as an efficient, neat, modern airport; as an efficiently run airport. Even you said, driving here is quite a nice experience. So, part of the success would be more efficient management and it’s not so much to boast about,

A: Yes. Before it was all within the Ministry and then at some point they set up the Authority, which I think is a good step and it does a good job but still, for my colleague who manages Dar es Salaam Airport, it’s much more difficult to officially manage his airport, because, for all his decisions, especially investment decisions, but even others, he has to seek approval from higher authority so it’s running it as a government agency.

It’s just a more complex model and therefore less fast, less efficient and I think that has been proven worldwide and also here. So that is probably the biggest accomplishment.

We have just accomplished another one. I hope next week to witness the signing of a grant agreement between the Tanzania and the Dutch governments whereby the Dutch Government will grant 50 per cent to the financing of renovation of the airport. It’s a project of 35 million dollars. That, for us, is a lot of money.

It’s a problem that we have dragged along for about 10 years and a lot of money has to be spent in maintenance and overhaul. If you look at the picture behind you, you see a lot of asphalt and that is going to cost a lot. To renovate most of the asphalt, not even the runway, that has to be perpetual, but the rest of the asphalt is 15 million dollars.

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

Q: Over how long?

A: That has to be done now in one go. It’s one project. It hasn’t been renewed in the 40 years of existence of this airport and it’s still in a remarkably good condition, given that fact.

But now it needs to be taken off. As you maintain roads, you take off the top surface of about 12 centimetres and you put a new layer of asphalt there. But it’s so much asphalt that doing that costs 15 million dollars; only that.

We’ll also build some new infrastructure. Renovate the old ones, build some new ones and we’ll renovate and expand the terminal building, which is now very quickly becoming too small with our tourism growth.

So the biggest achievement, I would say, but it’s after the private parties left, but still KADCO, as a more or less independent entity, secured that loan to renovate the whole airport and we are now big enough finally to finance a big part, because as I said, 50 per cent will be granted and the other 50 per cent will have to be found by ourselves and we’ll be able to do that out of the running income, out of the running budget of the airport.

We’ll be able to finance the 50 per cent of the 35 million dollar investment. So that’s where the airport came, really in a short time span, and that’s why I say we are now in a different era whereby it might be very interesting again to think of the possibility of private partnerships.

Q: So the planned development of Kilimanjaro International Airport at 35 million dollars . . . tell me, what else it’s going to be used for in maybe five years?

A: I hope within the next two, two-and-a-half years from start to finalizing that project. It’s renovating runways, the taxiways, the air pad, the terminal building and it will consist of an overhaul of the drainage system.

The airport was built 40 years ago and the drainage system was really basic. The Dutch Government financing later gave a lot of attention to environmental issues as well, so that’s why those elements are also taken into consideration Q: And is there a terminal expansion or something like that?

A: Yes. We’ll not build a new terminal, but we will renovate and expand the existing one. We’ve set aside a budget of like seven million dollars to do the terminal building and we see ample opportunities with that money to be able to renovate the existing terminal and then increase capacity for the next ten years.

Q: And do you have any advice on other prospective airport concessions, airport authorities or PPPs in this region?

A: I think out of the analysis that we’ve had like what maybe went wrong or happened to KADCO

there are a few lessons. One is, be extremely clear from the beginning what you expect from each other.

I think in the case of KADCO, the expectations of the different parties differed. I’m not saying they were wrong, but they differed. So you have to be extremely clear what you expect of one another.

And then it should immediately be clear whether this PPP is financially viable or it’s not and it must be financially viable because otherwise it might not work. Private partners will only invest if there is a profit to make and that profit must be reasonable.

One reason private partners may come aboard is probably because they might have the knowledge, but mostly it’s because they have the ability to invest. They will only do so if they can make some money.

The government side of the PPP must be aware that the private partners want to make some money.

So the contract between the two must be clear on all those aspects.

They must be clear on who is responsible for what, for maintenance of existing infrastructure, but what I’m saying is that it’s very interesting to maintain airport infrastructure.

It’s not difficult, it’s not rocket science, but it’s a lot of work because you have to detail all the elements of the airport management.

And of course in different models, if you look at Europe, if you look around the world, there are models whereby the state, the authorities, will actually stay with the infrastructure as their property and their responsibility to maintain and just give out the management of the airport to a management authority and then you are seeking for experience, for efficiency, which is probably an okay decision.

I would expect, in this region, governments are looking much more for investors, people who actually want to put money into it because it’s difficult for governments to set money aside for infrastructure development.

So then you are looking at a different kind of partner. You have to look for partners who actually have money to invest, who have a very long- term view because getting your money out of airport operations takes a long time.

Turn to P24

January 2012

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AirportReview |

Kilimanjaro International Airport

From P23

Q: How long does it usually take to recoup an investment in this region?

A: I don’t think you can put a number on it, but if you build a runway, let’s take the basic element that you need for an airport – a runway – you build it for almost a lifetime I would say, but the basic investment in a runway will be millions already.

So, by definition, you need a long time, usually it will be like20 years, to recoup that investment and it’s the same with all the other investments that are done in the terminal building in the equipment that you need or the technical bit.

It’s usually 20 years or more and that’s why you see also that, all over the world where airports are being privatized, that it’s always long-term contracts. We are almost talking about 25 years. The same was done for KADCO, but, within that time, there must be money to be made.

Q: And is the Tanzanian Government looking to sell the shares of KADCO or are they looking to holding on to them now that they’ve got the partnership with the Dutch Government?

A: I can’t tell. As far as I’ve been informed, there is a study on several options and one option would be to look for new partners for PPP. Another is retaining it. Maybe it will run quite well as it does today and indeed we will be able to invest with KADCO as a government entity running that airport. Maybe we should keep it the way it is.

Q: Is it making money for the Government now?

A: Yes, we are making a profit; we have been for the last six or seven years, I think. Yes, we are making a profit, but we still pay only a symbolic fee to the airport for that infrastructure. So more or less infrastructure we have for free, although the investment we do now doesn’t make it free anymore and now we have to finance the investment, but yes, it’s making a little bit of a profit although so far all the profits have remained in the company and we re-invest in the airport.

24 |

Q: And would you recommend a PPP model for a green-field airport?

A: Absolutely. Because building of a green-field airport is a huge investment and I can imagine that, in this region, governments can use all the money they have. If private partners hope to invest that kind of money in that infrastructure, why not? But again, it’s only feasible when there’s a market, but anywhere where there’s no market will be extremely difficult.

Let’s face it, the only big markets in the region are in the capitals. Even Kilimanjaro Airport, although it’s growing quickly and is a big tourist destination, it’s still a small airport; 650,000 passengers, in Europe we would call that a regional airport.

Q: Do you think there’s a big enough market to build another PPP or government will just have to seek money? Will there be enough of market for the private

sector to actually invest in a green-field airport?

A: Again it depends where.

Suppose you want to build another airport on the other side of Nairobi, it will absolutely be viable to ask the private partners to build the green-field airport if you promise to close down JKIA and they get all the revenue. Definitely, the market is big enough. If you want to build it anywhere in-between Mombasa and Nairobi, it’s no – because there is a market. Extremely simple.

Q: And aside from the financial investment from KADCO into the airport, what additional resources have been acquired to keep things running?

A: Well, so far, you get a lot of the investment work done with either grants or aid, but again that is all money put into it. But what you need to successfully and efficiently run an airport, you need a lot of money, of

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

course you need an organization and you need experience in that.

Q: Does KADCO have experience or consultants or things like that to keep things running?

A: No, actually I’m the only expert here. We have a very good organization, quite efficient and there are some training institutes in Dar es Salaam and in Nairobi, training people working in the aviation industry. We do get some assistance from abroad in running this airport and then we are now mainly on business development, which was a fairly new thing for KADCO. We are heavily under-serviced because we only have a few airlines that use this airport and we have, by market research, found out that a lot of the passengers are actually destined for northern Tanzania, coming via Nairobi and maybe coming via road. We just took the numbers from Namanga border and you can exactly see the nationality of people passing there and the total numbers.

Q: Which country preferred flying versus driving?

A: It’s again a super market-driven thing. To Nairobi, there’s a lot more airlines flying, so you can get a direct flight out of London to Nairobi and because of competition, it’s a lot more cheaper. Fares to Kilimanjaro are relatively high just because of

defective runways served and the airlines operating from here can keep their fares high because the plane will leave for anywhere. So there is more demand than there is supply and we need to attract more airlines to this airport because the market is there.

We’ve been able to analyze what we call the linkage – so how many people fly via Dar es Salaam or fly via Nairobi to get to the northern circuit, to get to Arusha and we’ve been able to establish what the total market is, where people are coming from, what the biggest source markets are. In other words, where do people come from who want to fly to Kilimanjaro?

I can go to Chan Airlines and try to convince him to operate a flight to Beijing from Kilimanjaro airport, but they would never fill the plane, everybody can understand so that will not happen. So, in order to effectively talk to an airline, you need to present a business case within your network that you have the ability to fill a plane with people from this, this, and this.

This is the biggest source market et cetera. For us, for example, the biggest source market, the place where the most people who want to fly come from, is Lamu. Then there’s Paris and Frankfurt, standard big destinations in Europe. In the United States it’s New York, Boston and Toronto.

So we’ve analyzed that whole market and so we can present to airlines a business case. ‘This is your market that you can capture and,

with a certain frequency, this is the amount of people you could actually carry on your plane and the average fare you could make and this is the profit’.

That has become, over the last decade or so, a real industry in itself.

There’s business development in the aviation industry and the experience and knowledge of that in this region is not very high. For example, we get from abroad, we get consultants, that’s interesting, very promising, actually. I’m pretty sure within the next year, year-and-a-half; we’ll be able to see two additional airlines coming to Kilimanjaro.

Q: Yes. And how has investment benefitted the airport and the community including passenger and cargo performance? You said the passenger increase is a result of KADCO’s advancement over the years. Management of cargo, service quality, any other matrix that has impacted the surrounding community?

A: Well, the airport itself, apart from doing social responsibility projects et cetera, which, as KADCO, we try to hold a good relationship with the neighbouring communities, but the airport itself is fairly limited in its impact to the surrounding communities in that it provides jobs for quite a number of people and the busier we get the more that is.

For your idea, we at KADCO employ about 200 people total at the airport. You can see by the number of airport passes we give out. So that’s about the impact in the region and the more business, the more people, the more the growth but that’s just a few hundreds.

The big impact of an efficient airport operation is on the region.

The doubling of traffic that we have seen over the last decade or so means that double the amount of tourists come to this region, spend their money and stay in hotels and that’s a multiplier which is huge.

There is actually reason why we get this money from the Dutch Government. It’s not just that about the Government liking Kilimanjaro Airport so much, this fund that we get the grant from is aimed at infrastructure projects with a purpose. So we have had to prove in our application that by investing in Turn to P26

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AirportReview |

Kilimanjaro International Airport

From P25

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

this airport, we would actually help develop the region and therefore work on helping the poor and less privileged. So, by definition, yes it does a lot for the region. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? I had a gap in-between so I saw how tremendously it’s growing. Arusha has also doubled in size I think in the meantime and definitely you’ll see a lot of development now in Arusha and a lot of people also developing, so I think it’s very important.

Q: And are there any numbers in cargo performance as well?

A: Yes. The cargo is a little more problematic for our airport. Most of the cargo we have is outbound cargo, so it is exports that are being produced in this region and the exports that I’m talking about are very similar to Nairobi, where it’s mostly fresh products. Cut flowers, some vegetables, some fruits, but all are fresh products that are being grown here.

There are some big flower farms in this region. What they produce will be transported out of Kilimanjaro Airport in the belly of passenger aircraft. As you may know, a passenger aircraft still has some capacity apart from passengers to also take some cargo and this KLM flight which is taking off here every day to Amsterdam will always be filled with flowers, fruits and vegetables; as much as it can carry, but the rest is being tracked in Nairobi mostly and flown from there because, unfortunately, the total produced in the region is not big enough to get full cargo planes. So all the growers together might produce enough to fill one or two cargo planes per week but it’s a fresh product; they need to move it every day, otherwise it’s not fresh anymore. So that’s a bit of a Catch-22.

They are not big enough so they have to track it to Nairobi and that makes it more expensive, more difficult for them to expand really, so they are always competing to Nairobi and it’s difficult to get out of this catch. So the cargo traffic follows passenger traffic. If we get another airline flying to Europe, we’ll definitely get more cargo traffic via the airport because it can lift that.

Unfortunately, the region is too small for full cargo planes.

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Actually there were people here yesterday discussing plans to in the future try to get smaller cargo aircraft ferrying them within the region. So, you can have a smaller aircraft maybe picking it up here and bringing it to another hub like Nairobi or Istanbul.

Trying to develop that hasn’t come yet. So the cargo traffic over the last decade when KADCO was here has increased, but only with the increase of passenger traffic.

Q: And lastly, do you think it will be necessary for KADCO to go back to PPP or do you think it is okay? What’s your feeling on that because you seem to be working on both scenarios?

A: True. I believe it is very important to continue running this airport as an independent entity.

Like I said, it’s a model that we’ve seen almost all over the world and within Europe and in state-run airports. That’s a good and efficient model. Onus of this entity should be whether it should be government or private partners or a combination of the two.

It’s more a question of financing and of necessary investments than it is of pure airport management. I think, over the last two years, where we have functioned as a state- owned company, the airport was managed just as well as the years before. If the Government plays its role as a

shareholder and at the same time as an authority, of course we have to be checked as well if we do everything safe and secure, but the Authority plays its role very well . . . they keep those things separated, then there is no problem by keeping it where it is, by keeping the Government as a shareholder.

However, if we want substantial and additional investments, there might be opportunities here to develop a lot more than just this airport. There might be opportunities to develop more in terms of processing industries. We have a lot more space here and there’s interest; we might be able to develop more tourism-related business right here, which now has concentrated always on Arusha.

It could very well be established for a part at this airport. Somebody flying in, actually flying out to Europe, driving out from here, transfer centres; there’s business opportunities but they all take knowledge but also investment, which I think could benefit from private investors, private involvement. So that would be probably a good model.

But it’s a choice, it’s a strategic choice of government; what do we really want? To just have an efficient piece of aviation infrastructure, per se, need private involvement if you want, foreign investors, that would be better. I think it’s a good model, especially for here.

January 2012

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Feature |

Dreamliner

A Layman’s Guide to the

Dreamliner The team has incorporated airplane healthmonitoring systems that allow the airplane to self-monitor and report systems maintenance requirements to ground-based computer systems by itself, reports AMY FALLON

T

he anticipation was sky-high, you could say. Despite being warned by officials it was a “whistle-stop” tour only, for troubled airline Qantas’ 91st birthday, Australians couldn’t get enough of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner when it flew into Sydney on a promotional visit on November 18.

As the “plane of the future” prepared to touch down on Australian soil, the national carrier was bombarded by members of the public wanting to know where they could get a glimpse of the jet.

The Dreamliner was recently on display at an event in Auckland for Air New Zealand, the first customer of Boeing’s 787-9 version. They’ve put in a request for eight of the much-hyped aircraft.

Across the Tasman the B787 was showcased for Qantas Group employees and special guests at Sydney Airport alongside an historic B707 in Qantas livery, owned by the airline’s ambassador and celebrity pilot John Travolta, a B737-800 with new Boeing Sky Interior and a B747-400.

But there was no public display for the Dreamliner in Oz, causing The Australian Business Traveller website to run a piece advising members of the public where they could get a close-up of it while on Aussie soil.

28 |

By the end of its visit, the “next-gen jetliner” had probably received even more press coverage than Travolta, the other highprofile guest in the country that week.

Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce, who has 50 Dreamliners on order, described the B787 as a “gamechanger”.

“It offers greater fuel-efficiency, lower operating costs and a better customer experience than current aircraft of similar size,” he told a media pack.

Timing

“It has the flexibility to serve both the low-fare and premium markets, across Qantas and Jetstar (the company’s budget airline).”

The Dreamliner’s Australia visit was good press for the Flying Kangaroo, attempting to win back passengers after its entire fleet was grounded during a crippling industrial strike on October 29.

It was perfect timing for Boeing, coming just days after the Dreamliner suffered its first technical glitch following the beginning of its service.

On November 7 the pilot of an All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane was forced to manually deploy the jet’s landing gear

aircraft took off on its maiden passenger trip.

The Dreamliner took to the skies on October 26 at Japan’s Narita Airport, bound for Hong Kong amid a press and passenger frenzy.

This was the first new class of aircraft launched by Boeing since the 777 in 1995.

The Dreamliner had been billed as the plane with the Rolls-Royce engine. The flight deck boasts the choice of furry seats, along with LCD multi-function displays.

Dreamliner What do you Know?

Seats: 210 to 250 passengers Range: 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles Wing span: 197 ft (60m) Length: 186 ft (57m) Height: 56 ft (17m) Cruise speed: (Mach 0.85) Total cargo volume: 4,400 cubic feet

after the automated system failed to engage.

The incident occurred when the aircraft was approaching Okayama Airport, in western Japan, from Haneda Airport in the country’s capital Tokyo.

“The plane went around again as the pilot manually lowered the landing gear,” an ANA spokeswoman said.

The flight landed safely without further incident.

Boeing and ANA are working to address the issue, which came only two weeks after the new revolutionary

Transform

Android touchscreens are built into every seat. There is bigger luggage space, quieter engines and there are no sliding plastic screens on the passenger windows.

Instead you simply push a button to make them go dark.

One airline managing director, Chris Browne, from Thomson Airways, said that the B787 will “transform long-haul travel, opening up new destinations and making it affordable for everyone”.

Ahead of its maiden commercial voyage with Japan’s largest airline, a barrel of the traditional Japanese alcoholic drink sake was opened. Economy tickets were snapped up like hot cakes in just minutes by excited Turn to P31

January 2012

| 29

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Feature |

Dreamliner

From P29

passengers. “I want to try riding on it once, as it uses a lot of Japanese technology as well. I’ve heard that it’s a really revolutionary plane, so I really wanted to try riding on it,” said one passenger at check-in, speaking to the BBC. Another of the 240 passengers onboard, Gino Bertuccio from Miami, Florida, was so excited about “making history” by flying on the Dreamliner that he accidentally bid over £100,000 in an online auction for a seat.

History

Stephanie Wood from Davie, in the same state, forked out nearly $18,700 for two business-class seats.

“It’s silly, but it’s a little piece of history,” she explained. “New cars come out all the time but how often do new planes come out?”

As one smiling journalist remarked as he reclined in the jet’s business class seat, it’s the little things that will impress travellers flying on the new plane.

But it’s the engineering that is a main draw card for Boeing.

According to the Boeing website, the Dreamliner is “simpler than today’s aeroplanes and offers increased functionality and efficiency”.

“The team has incorporated

airplane health-monitoring systems that allow the airplane to self-monitor and report systems maintenance requirements to ground-based computer systems by itself,” the firm says. More than half of the plane, which features a design with raked wingtips, is made from carbonfibre reinforced plastic, rather than traditional aluminum and steel. Even the fuselage and the wings.

“Plastic is what you have on the dashboard of your car. This is not plastic,” a Boeing spokesman boasted during one media briefing.

The Dreamliner is 20% more

fuel efficient than similarly sized airplanes and produces 20% fewer emissions than similarly sized jets.

It’s in fact been described as the “most environmentally friendly plane ever”.

“Carbon fibre is very light, but very strong,” Boeing’s Vice President Scott Fancher told Sky News as he relaxed onboard in Business Class with paying passengers on the first flight.

“We’ve been able to build a plane that can withstand the loads in flight, but that burns 20 per cent less fuel.”

Very significantly, the Dreamliner has a 10% cash-seat mile cost than other airlines. Boeing has admitted that the plane will be cheaper for them to operate.

Filtration

And, perhaps even more importantly, they also claim that the plane can reduce every traveller’s worst nightmare – jet lag – through an onboard filtration system that pumps cleaner air into cabins, and ‘sunset’ and ‘sunrise’ lighting.

The cabin is pressurised to the equivalent of 1800 metres (6,000 feet) rather than the usual 2400 metres.

Boeing says that 8% more oxygen is absorbed into the blood as a result.

Passenger Tomoko Manjugawa, who was on the inaugural voyage, said she had a much more comfortable flight than usual.

“Flying is normally so drying.

This is much more comfortable,” she insisted. This will please Boeing, considering they’ve ordered 821 Turn to P32

January 2012

| 31

Feature |

Dreamliner

From P31

B787s to be made. The jets are manufactured at their factory in Everett, Washington.

But the British are boasting that they are playing a part in the making of the Dreamliner, with a quarter of the plane by value made in Blighty.

The Trent 1000 engines for the aircraft, unveiled in Seattle in July 2007 (by then Boeing had received 670 orders) are actually built by Rolls Royce in Derby, in England’s East Midlands region.

The Business Class seats – each Dreamliner seats between 210 to 290 passengers – are made by Eaton Aerospace. The landing gear is assembled by Messier Dowty, while QinetiQ manufactured the wind tunnel used to test the plane.

“The commercial side of our business is totally booming right now,” said Frank Dubey, Vice President of Eaton Aerospace Ltd.

Near-silence

The Dreamliner, which was eight years in the making, had its UK debut appearance at the Farnborough International Air Show in July 2010.

Jonathan Margolis, a technology specialist who witnessed a test flight there, said, “The near-silence is almost spooky. But the thing which struck me most . . . was the obvious suppleness of the composite structure.

“You can clearly see the wings flexing. It almost looks like an Airfix kit.”

The plane was initially scheduled to begin services in May 2008 but ran into production and design problems.

Analysts say the disruptions have cost Boeing $4billion than planned.

The delay has also affected 787 suppliers in the US, Russia, Japan and Italy.

Some say it was to be expected.

“Any time you’re dealing with new material and new techniques, there’s bound to be disruptions in development,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group Corporation, a Virginiabased research firm.

“Teething problems are relatively common for a new jetliner entering service, but the 787 is under a lot of scrutiny due to its difficult development history.

32 |

“This glitch shouldn’t have any impact on customer perceptions of the 787, as long as Boeing aggressively pursues its investigation and implements any needed fix.”

Despite the setback and recent technical hiccup, airlines are “even more keen to get their hands on the aircraft”, says Paul Sheridan, head of risk advisory at aviation consultancy Ascend Worldwide Ltd. “The advanced technology used in the 787 means that, in spite of the delays, it is still ahead of its time,” he said.

“The size and range of the aircraft offer airlines the ability to open new long-haul routes linking a range of cities that would have been uneconomic with other aircraft types in the market.”

Boeing still has a backlog of requests for the aircraft.

ANA ordered 55 Dreamliners worth a total of $11 billion at current prices. Forty of them are the 260passenger 787-8 version. The carrier,

who began regular services using the plane on November 1, has said it will trial the aircraft domestically before putting it on long international routes.

Boeing have also taken orders from Virgin Atlantic and BA along withThomson Airways, who will receive its first delivery from the Chicago-based firm in January.

Boeing’s list is getting longer.

Benefits

On November 14 Oman Air, the sultanate’s state-owned carrier, announced it had made an order for six B787s at the Dubai Air Show.

“Our decision to order the 787-8 is part of Oman Air’s long-term growth strategy to expand and modernize our fleet with newer, more fuelefficient airplanes,” said CEO Peter Hill.

“We see direct benefits because of the Dreamliner’s fuel efficiency and operating economics as well as the enhanced travel experience

Jetstar Chief Executive Bruce Buchanan labeled the B787 a “huge competitive weapon”.

“Innovation has been critical to Jetstar’s success and a modern fleet is key to our goal of being the best lowcost carrier in the world,” he said.

“The Dreamliner is a revolutionary aircraft that will deliver a new standard of comfort for our passengers and put downward pressure on the two biggest operational costs for airlines, maintenance and fuel.”

Excitement

that Oman Air will be able to offer its customers aboard this airplane.”

Boeing said it and Oman Air had a 10-year-long partnership and this was part of a “new chapter”.

“We see the 787 as a perfect complement to Oman Air’s growing fleet, which will enable them to serve new destinations and enhance customer experience with the world’s most advanced passenger jet,” said Marty Bentrott, vice president of Sales for Middle East, Russia and Central Asia.

Qatar Airways will actually be the first Middle East airline to take

delivery of the B787. The Doha-based carrier is due to take delivery of two aircraft in February, out of a total order of 60.

They want 15 of the base model 787-8 Dreamliners.

Destinations

Meanwhile in the southern hemisphere, airline executives are happy that the Dreamliner will add to their range of destinations. The 787-9 model will give Qantas more room to cover destinations, including Dallas-Fort Worth, opening up extra destinations in the US and Asia.

Jetstar, the first low-cost carrier to operate the Dreamliner, will receive the first of the group’s B787s in the middle of next year.

Qantas’ order includes15 B787-8s for Jetstar’s long-haul operations, plus 35 of the 787-9s.

In Australia, there was so much excitement from some wannabe passengers about the Dreamliner, with one even expressing concern that Qantas would end up with Jetstar’s hand-me downs.

“It’s a shame Jetstar get the first 787’s and Qantas don’t get them until they are older and secondhand” Tweeted @Katrina Moorehead.

“Don’t fear, Qantas won’t have ‘secondhand’ 787s. We will be getting brand new deliveries concurrently once production ramps up,” Qantas assured them.

Between the two Australian carriers, this makes it the Dreamliner’s second largest airline order after the 55 ordered by ANA. Buchanan has branded the aircraft a “quantum leap in aircraft technology and passenger comfort”.

“It’s been said that the 787 represents the same kind of paradigm shift we saw with the first commercial jetliners in the 1950s and the 747 jumbos in the 1970s,” he said.

At a costs of $200 million though, it remains to be seen, according to one analyst, whether Boeing will make money “well into the 2020s, if ever” from the B787. Boeing has refused to be drawn into the speculation.

Its rival,the Airbus A350, is due in 2013. Boeing reportedly intends to make 10 planes each month from then, although there have been some doubt from experts as whether they’ll be able to do this.

The Dreamliner may have had a head start, but it needs a bump-free ride to make sure it stays ahead of the game.

January 2012

| 33

Dispatch |

USA

Letter from

New York

BY LARS DABNEY

Jack the Cat & Jim the Meerkat – or a Tale of Two Airports

L

ate in the evening of Tuesday, October 25. One JFK Customs area’s many employees is minding their own business— or the US Government’s business—when a howling orange cat descends through the ceiling.

This kind of thing happens more often than you would think.

But this particular cat was special. This was Jack, a feline so notorious that every post on the Facebook page dedicated to him generated hundreds of comments, and his disappearance—and discovery—had become subjects of national news.

Rewind seven weeks to August 25th.

Karen Pascoe trundles her luggage through the sliding glass doorways into JFK’s thrumming entry hall. She is leaving the Big Apple, indefinitely, for greener pastures out west. She has locked her apartment door for the last time, bid farewell to friends and neighbours, slung her bags into a taxicab trunk and watched the lights of the greatest city slide down behind the Queensboro Bridge.

Karen is moving to California. Her two cats are going with her but they’ll be flying cargo, ensconced in travel kennels that she hands over to the check-in attendant with, perhaps, a trace of misgiving. She goes through security and heads to her gate as her cats are ferried deeper into the bowels of JFK. At some point, awaiting further movement, the cat crates are stacked on top of one another. The uppermost shudders, then slides off while no-one is looking. It lands with a bang, the door pops 34 |

open, and Jack the Cat is free. Barry, his sibling, can only watch and meow in envy as Jack sets out to explore one of the world’s most notoriously labyrinthine, inefficient, and over-crowded transit hubs.

Eventually, a baggage handler notices the empty crate. Calls are made. Karen is notified and her travel plans sent into haywire. But the wily ginger furball evades detection for days, then weeks.

As public attention to Jack’s plight spreads, both American Airlines and JFK began to take direct action. Intense and not overly-friendly media attention had focused on both organizations as the search dragged on. JFK notified its horde of 36,000 workers to keep a weather eye out for the fugitive.

American posted updates on the hunt to its

Facebook page. Between August 25th and October 25th, a total of ten cats were found in JFK as a result of the search for Jack. One of them, found in the airport postal office, was male, ginger, and malnourished from weeks on the lam. Premature celebrations that Jack had been found followed suit.

But Jack was chipped, and this cat was not.

Dismayed but not disheartened, the hunt continued.

Collateral Cats The ten collateral cats were eventually adopted out to other families, largely through the efforts of the wildly popular Facebook page created to publicize Jack’s status. Jack himself dropped through the ceiling after 61 days of roaming the interior

labyrinths of JFK, severely malnourished, suffering from muscle loss and fatty liver disease. American Airlines picked up the tab on his vet bill and flew Ms. Pascoe back to New York to be with him during his recovery, and will fly both of them out to California once Jack is well enough. The public has applauded the airline’s material commitment, but questioned whether any real change will take place to prevent such losses recurring in the future.

The story of Jack the Cat is about more than animal rights or the abundance of feral animals in JFK. The two months it took to find Jack—and the ten other cats found on the way—are also symptoms of the burgeoning chaos that has come to define air travel through some of the world’s busiest transportation hubs.

Agile Consider this scenario in another airport: Jomo Kenyatta, Nairobi’s main airport and a major hub for East African travel, but a fraction of the size and complexity of JFK. A cat—or why not something more exotic, we’re talking about the safari capital of the world after all, let’s go with a meerkat, call him Jim—escapes into the airport. Jim the Meerkat is small, agile, and hard to track. But Jomo Kenyatta has a total internal area of around 25,000 square meters, while JFK covers 5,000 acres.

Jim isn’t in for the adventure of a lifetime.

Finding him might cost the airport an afternoon’s concerted effort, maybe a halfdozen jars of peanut butter spread liberally around the place. If every searcher were assigned a thousand square meters—an area about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, feasibly searchable in a few hours—it would take only 25 people to locate the suspect. Even if we double the area to account for rafters and crawl space (an area JFK is accused of failing to search), Jim the Meerkat seems destined for a return to captivity before sundown.

The area differential between JFK and Jomo Kemyatta only scratches the surface.

The number of passengers processed annually by each facility (48 million at JFK, versus Jomo’s 4.8 million) , along with the number of flights and destinations served, are vastly different. JFK contributes an estimated $30bn per year to New York’s economy, or half of Kenya’s national GDP. Yet a larger airport hardly benefits from the economies of scale. If anything, the larger it is, the worse it gets.

All of the benchmarks by which one measures an airport on the level of the individual traveler—flight punctuality, baggage handling errors (feline or

She is leaving the Big Apple, indefinitely, for greener pastures out west ”

otherwise), time to pass through security, Customs, proximity to downtown, and the like—suffer as an airport’s scale is increased.

The only noticeable advantage is a greater number of destinations served, unless you are particularly fond of airport shopping.

But I have yet to meet the traveler who would rather spend an hour trawling duty-free, than arrive an hour earlier at their destination.

JFK has consistently failed me on almost all of these metrics over eight years of living in New York, though never quite as badly as it failed Karen Pescoe in the matter of Jack the Cat. Like most native New Yorkers, I would gladly pay an extra hundred dollars for a ticket out of LaGuardia to avoid the delays, baggage loss, and ludicrous cab fare involved in a trip via JFK. Jomo Kenyatta, on the other hand, has consistently yielded up my baggage in a matter of minutes, set planes in the air on schedule, and cost me no more than 20 minutes and the price of a sit-down lunch to get into Nairobi’s downtown.

The heart of these differences lies in logistics. Serving ten times as many passengers doesn’t just mean more rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom. It means flights getting in each others’ way, dozens of pieces of baggage that look exactly alike, and a vastly enhanced security presence owing to the airport’s attractiveness as a target. It means that one minor error—say, a plane delayed on the runway—can cause exponential ripples of chaos, as much as the most exotic of butterflies flapping its wings in Brazil.

All of which can make for an unpleasant travel experience. Yet airports are businesses, and the happiness of travelers is not the only priority on their plates. Which goes someway to explain why Jomo Kenyatta, my past experiences with which have always compared so favourably to JFK, is in the process of trying to emulate its larger sibling.

In July of this year the Kenya Airport

Authority announced plans to begin a three-phase expansion project, nearly doubling the total area of the airport, and preparing it to meet a conspicuously optimistic future passenger quota of around 20 million. The plans involve the construction of new parking facilities, a new terminal, and a much-needed refurbishment of the existing airport’s main areas and infrastructure.

These expansions will enable Jomo Kenyatta Airport, and its symbiotic partner Kenya Airways, to remain competitive as a central travel hub on the African continent.

The business imperative is obvious. A slew of other airports around Africa, including Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa, South Africa’s Tambo International, and Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam, to mention just a few, are undergoing similar development.

Expansion But Jomo Kenyatta’s expansion will come at a cost. Expect it to look more and more like JFK: constantly under construction, swamped with lost baggage, and lucky to get a plane off within an hour of its scheduled departure. Increased size and prominence, combined with the escalating conflict with Al Shabaab, will demand heightened paranoia and mean longer times to get through security and Customs (admittedly, a small price to pay for not being blown up—but still).

The cab fare, at least, should remain constant. Jomo Kenyatta has the enviable advantage of having large amounts of undeveloped land nearby, ripe for the building upon. With all that space, and the fact that the airport currently handles twice as many passengers than the 2.5 million it was originally built for, it should be less a surprise that the Kenya Airport Authority is choosing to expand now than that they haven’t done so before.

Meanwhile, expect there to be a noticeable rise in missing cats.

Lawrence Dabney is a war correspondent and humanitarian lawyer based out of Washington, DC. He grew up in Perth, Western Australia, and has since lived in over half a dozen countries around the world. He is a politics editor for The Faster Times, and the founder and lead correspondent of AK Diplomacy. His writing has appeared in Kenya’s The Star, Eclectica Esoterica magazine, and The Blue & White, among others.

He is currently embedded as a reporter with US Marine forces in Afghanistan.

January 2012

| 35

Dispatch |

Australia

Letter from

Australia

BY AMY FALLON

T

The Qantas Dispute

he Flying Kangaroo, aka Australian national carrier Qantas, celebrated its 91st birthday last week in midNovember with visits from two high-profile travelers – their ambassador, the actor John Travolta, as well as the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, in the country for promotional duties.

The events were labeled in one Australian newspaper as a “one-two PR salvo” for the troubled airline, now hard at work in the lead-up to the busy Christmas and New Year holiday period at repairing the damage done to its brand during the recent industrial dispute that led to its entire fleet being grounded.

The move by CEO Alan Joyce on October 29 to cancel all flights with immediate effect left more than 70,000 passengers (108 planes at 22 airports) stranded, or up the creek without a paddle, as some Australians might say.

Speaking on November 14 at the unveiling of theDreamliner, the “plane of the future” which Qantas has ordered 50 of, Joyce had been hopeful that the airline would reach agreements over new collective contracts with unions representing long-haul pilots, aircraft engineers and ground crew by the deadline of Monday November 21.

But on the day, negotiations between the airline and two unions representing ground crew and long-haul pilots collapsed.

This leaves the sides to face binding arbitration before Australia’s industrial relations umpire, Fair Work Australia, who called a halt to the grounding on October 29. The Transport Workers Union, who represents baggage handlers, ended talks with Qantas just after discussions with the long-haul pilots’ union broke down.

The two parties could not reach agreement on job-security demands, including the number of contractors Qantas wanted to use, said the TWU’s legal

36 |

representative Michael Burns. A three-week negotiation extension had been a possibility, but both Qantas and the union had to be in agreement. The matters in dispute will now go to binding arbitration, however the pilots’ union and the TWU will discuss with Qantas negotiators those areas on which agreement is more likely.

Joyce reiterated that although the arbitration process could last months, there could be no industrial action during this time.

Any union that attempts this faces big fines.

Tension The TWU however is deciding this Thursday whether to take legal action to win back the right to strike.

These events aren’t a surprise.

Even at a rally held outside the Australian high commission in London tensions were running high, with a union official in a Joyce costume threatening two people dressed in kangaroo outfits with a fake knife.

The TWU insisted then that Qantas had no interest in cutting a deal with unions and was looking for arbitration ending.

“Qantas are just not interested in reaching any sort of agreement at all,” said national president Jim McGiveron.

The airline is also in dispute with the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), and the Australian and International Pilots Association, since it announced in August a plan to restructure its operations and outsource some of the services.

They’re concerned about Qantas’ moves to cut costs and set up new Asia-based airlines.

Richard Woodward, the vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, said negotiations between Qantas and the pilots’ union had finished after the two sides failed to agree over the terms for efficiency gains of up to 20% sought by the company, for example pilot rostering.

He said that the union was “very disappointed”, adding that Qantas had taken a “very hard-headed attitude to negotiations and have not compromised”.

The binding arbitration would drag on for months because of the “complex nature of the contract”, Woodward warned.

Qantas, who claims the long-running dispute was costing them $15 million per week due to flight delays and cancellations, was due to begin talks with the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.

The country’s newspaper The Age warned during the industrial action that Aussies would

be “understanding” if the affair turned out to be a “nasty dispute that didn’t last too long”.

“They will be unforgiving if their treasured national carrier suffers a long-running and debilitating loss of income and reputation,” an editorial said.

The strike, which came amid the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in Perth and made international headlines, lasted 48 hours.

Some analysts are warning now it could take years for Qantas to win back customers who have shunned the carrier.

Watershed The move to ground flights was described as a “watershed decision in Australia’s industrial history” by The Sydney Morning Herald.

“I think Qantas will have to tread very carefully – not just in the coming months but in the coming years – to regain lost ground in terms of its reputation,” said Tim Heberden from consultancy firm Brand Finance.

“Qantas has faced a number of negative headlines in the last few years and should evaluate the cumulative effect of reputational risk when considering future actions and statements.”

A poll has showed an alarming 60% of Australian voters are unimpressed with the airline over the bitter industrial dispute. Nearly half (42%) have blamed Qantas management for the grounding. The already unpopular Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who ordered the workplace mediator, doesn’t fare well either.

Nearly half of voters (46%) disapprove of the way she handled the affair.

Qantas, famously mentioned in the film Rain Man by Dustin Hoffman as never having crashed (not completely true, they’ve never had a major crash) was working overtime to assure customers their Christmas flights would be safe, on Twitter.

“We’re just informing customers there’s no more industrial uncertainty & we are back on schedule,”@QantasAirways told@ gusworldau.

Some customers were still doubtful.

“The little asterisks on these Qantas flights should say *unless otherwise grounded

by Qantas board of directors,” wrote @ LeevanNetten. @kanani81 had pleaded with them, “Dear Qantas – just booked my Christmas flights with you. Please don’t strike again. Also – double frequent flyer points would be awesome”.

They appear to have listened on the frequent flyer front. On November 16 Qantas, which has 65% of the domestic Australian market,announced new moves targeting its frequent flyer programme members as a way of saying sorry for the grounding of its fleet.

They will increase the frequent flyer

Nearly half of voters

(46%)

disapprove of the way she handled the affair ”

points earned for passengers travelling, but only for a few weeks, and only platinum and platinum one members will receive double points. Silver and selected bronze frequent flyer members will receive only 25% more points, with gold members getting 50% more. The offer, already effective, applies to all eligible Qantas flights until December 23, including flights already booked.

The carrier will also cut fares across their entire network. Qantas are offering passengers affected by the industrial dispute special promotional deals through one of the biggest national advertising campaigns in their 90-year history, as the busy festive season approaches.

One “goodwill gesture” to win back those directly affected by the industrial dispute though is offering them free flights to any domestic or New Zealand destination.

The airline says the free return economy flight being offered to more than 70,000 passengers affected by the grounding is completely separate to its compensation packages or any other payments. The International Pilots Association has branded the free flight sweetener a waste of money.

Happy Some passengers are happy with the attempts by Qantas to woo them back. “thanks @QantasAirways for the double points and the free epicure membership!” said @owenbrandt. Even the smallest things seemed to please some. “I flew QF 41 last nite and enjoyed your new menu! Love the Mango bar )” Tweeted @witakwintika.

According to the Australian Financial Review, much of the country’s “high-yielding corporate market” has already defected to Qantas’ rival Virgin Australia since industrial action against the Flying Kangaroo increased in August.

On the day of the grounding Virgin announced it was offering special “Stranded Passenger” recovery fares for Qantas passengers who were at a port away from home and held a Qantas ticket to return home initially within the following five days.

Virgin said it was also in discussions with “alliance partners to add extra capacity into the market as soon as possible”.

“Expect to see some creative strategies

by Virgin Australia to take advantage of the situation and assist them to increase their market share,” said Deborah Edwards, senior research fellow from University of Technology Sydney.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see emerging tactics such as a points-for-points deal offered by other airlines to take advantage of the dissatisfaction that customers will have with Qantas.”

It’s not just Aussies who feel frustrated

about Qantas’ future. Trade unionists in Argentina, Chile, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand and the USA showed their support for Qantas workers.

Watching “In Britain the Unite Union is watching very carefully because Willie Walsh [the head of British Airlines’ parent company] is looking . . . for ways to downgrade and outsource services,” said David Cockroft, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) general secretary.

“If Qantas gets away with setting up low-cost, low-quality, offshore airlines of inconvenience then lots of other airlines would quickly do the same thing.”

The TWU has warned overseas unions may target Qantas and Jetstar.

Internationally, Qantas’ airline ranking has slipped. In 2005 they were second. Last year they were seventh. This year they’re eighth. Although it’s worth $1.1 billion, the Qantas brand was in 13th position on Brand Finance’s table of Australia’s most valuable brands at the start of this year, the biggest loser of brand value since 2008. Rankings aren’t the only thing going downhill. This year Qantas shares have lost nearly a third of their value.

In mid-November they were up 7.6% to their highest in more than three months.

Days after Qantas flights were back in the skies, The Sydney Morning Herald ran a flight asking its readers “Do we really need Qantas?”

The paper finished by alluding to US singer-songwriter Frank Zappa, who once said that to be a real country, you need “a beer and an airline”.

“One out of two wouldn’t be so bad,” the Herald concluded.

Aussies are very fond of a drink. Indeed at the height of the “national crisis” one stuck passenger, Adam Cottrell from Western Australia (WA), remarked that although Qantas had put him up in a hotel and the hospitality wasn’t too bad, he was looking forward to arriving home to some “cold beers”.

The world’s second oldest airline will have to fight very hard to ensure its survival.

Amy Fallon is a freelance journalist.

Originally Australian, she has been based in the UK for the past five years, where she’s worked for most of the national papers and consumer titles. Before this she worked for the Australian national newswire, AAP. She loves Africa and has seven trips to the continent under her belt. She has written for African Woman as well as Marie Claire South Africa, among other African titles.

January 2012

| 37

Dispatch |

Uganda

Letter from

Kampala

BY ANGELA KINTU

Catching an Inaugural Flight the Ugandan Way In the African savannah grasslands we have dawn, noon, sundown and a lot of vagueness in-between”

38 |

U

gandans, like any good Africans, have their mini-cultures and habits, even when it concerns something as modern as taking a ride in an airplane. Here, we refer to anything beyond our landlocked borders as ‘outside countries’, and any excursion to Outside Countries must be treated quite seriously.

You will therefore find people escorting friends and relatives to the airport with huge bouquets of roses, video coverage – even

minibuses full of singing schoolchildren to entertain the traveller.

Said traveller will also usually be decked out in a new suit, regardless of the fact that it will wrinkle from eight hours of sitting still.

A large subculture within the miniculture is the loose and seldom understood concept of time.

In the African savannah grasslands we have dawn, noon, sundown and a lot of vagueness in-between.

We cannot be held accountable if you

choose to mark this vagueness with precise numbers and call it “o’clock”.

It is against this cultural backdrop that we set out from Kampala to get a relative safely onto the second ever flight of Qatar Airways from Entebbe Airport.

The inaugural flight for the dignitaries and the press had flown the previous day.

Our sister was flying to Guangzhou, China, via Doha. It was 10am and her flight was due at 2pm.

We had plenty of time. In a car packed with five people, she was the only one meant to be on the flight – the rest of us were along for the cultural experience of saying goodbye to someone heading for Outside Countries.

Last year Turkish Airlines began to fly through Entebbe. This year two premium airlines added Entebbe to their list of stops: America’s Delta and Qatar Airways.

Having only just entered the market, Qatar Airways was keen to prove their efficiency. Having a sunny afternoon before us we were keen to make a stopover at the beach in Entebbe.

Late A phone call confirmed that the lady travelling to Guangzhou with our sister was running late and only just leaving Kampala, so we decided to wait at a beach just 5 minutes away from the airport.

The Entebbe Aerobeach is a graveyard for old planes owned by a former flight captain.

For the equivalent of a dollar, you can enjoy an experience consisting of three cobwebby relics spread over a garden interspersed with patriotic sculptures and a few dusty benches.

The waterfront itself is beautiful, though.

We were warming up to the idea of some deep-fried fresh fish when we realised it was 1pm. We came to our senses and decided that travelling companion or no, we were going to check in.

The departures area of Entebbe Airport reminds me of the old hit song Hotel California. You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave! Getting to the departure lounge means some heavy manual labour.

To access the departures area you must navigate your way up a narrow flight of stairs. The new security measures at the airport prohibit driving up to the departures area, so whatever your luggage (or personal) weight, it is up the narrow winding staircase for you – sometimes with other people attempting to come down while you go up.

I do not know what the future of that arrangement is, but if ancient Egyptians

if ancient Egyptians could get one-tonne blocks up the pyramids, surely we can figure out a way to get luggage up those stairs”

could get one-tonne blocks up the pyramids, surely we can figure out a way to get luggage up those stairs.

After the stairs there are some huge concrete security barriers which we discovered make a good place to sit and swing your legs while you wait to see if you are going to be let onto a flight or shifted to the next available one.

Between the drizzle, the phone calls to the late travel companion and getting ourselves up those stairs, we arrived at the airport at 1:11pm; just one minute after check in was closed. I was pleased to see the Qatar Airways stewardess, even though I wasn’t pleased to hear that our one minute of lateness was going to cost us.

I had been wondering all along if the stewardesses looked as smart in person as they do in the CNN adverts. Well, they do.

The security guard at the entrance to the departure lounge berated us for coming late to a new flight.

He said the newbies always stick to the schedule, which to us meant that, in a couple of months, perhaps Qatar will run on Ugandan time too.

We packed up our band of merry escorts and made our way back to Kampala to plot a more airtight strategy to be on the Qatar Airways flight to Doha the next evening.

We flirted briefly with the idea of returning to our abandoned deep-fried fresh fish, but somehow the beachy mood had been dampened. So we rounded off our trip with an impromptu visit to another relative in Entebbe.

The next evening our sister was hours early for the flight to Doha. Her punctuality was probably helped largely by the fact that we all did not tag along, but trusted her to an uninterested driver.

Angela Kintu is a freelance writer and columnist for The Sunday Vision. She has worked as a radio producer and been a writer, editor and copy editor for an array of publications in Uganda including The New Vision, Sunday Magazine and Flair magazine. She is a regular contributor to African Woman magazine and a media consultant at the African Centre for Media Excellence.

Delivering World Class Training

January 2012

| 39

Dispatch |

South Africa

Letter from

Jo’burg

BY MWANGI GITHAHU

Taxi to Airport, Bringing Air Travel to the Masses

I

laughed merrily when I heard that South Africa’s chaotic minibus taxi industry had plans to launch an airline.

Even though it was already July, I couldn’t help but think the news was a delayed April Fools day joke.

I was not alone in my mirth. As one journalist here in South Africa wrote at the time, “When Santaco [the South African National Taxi Council] first announced that they were planning to launch an airline, the jokes flew among South Africans on Twitter that the pilots would make a U-turn in mid-air if the money collected didn’t match the number of people on board, or that passengers would use hand signals to convey where they wanted to go.”

On the road South African Taxi drivers are very much like their Kenyan counterparts the Matatu drivers, a law unto themselves. In fact it has often been said at conferences and seminars where the issue of public transport is debated, that the biggest challenge for the South African Department of Transport is the restructuring of the public transportation system. In South Africa public transportation for the poor is often depicted through gory pictures of minibus crashes.

I stopped laughing when Nkululeko Buthelezi, the Santaco business development officer addressed a news conference in Johannesburg a short while later to spell out the plans for what I had dismissed in my mind as “a matatu airline.”

At the news conference which was widely reported by an incredulous battery

40 |

President Jacob Zuma and other officials at the Santaco Airlines launch.

of local and foreign media, Buthelezi took the bulls by the horns and said, “I can see some of you rolling your eyes because of how our taxi drivers drive, I can assure you we won’t allow our taxi drivers to drive [the aircraft].”

Serious From everything I had read and heard about him, Buthelezi is a serious man and his thoughts and plans for the taxi industry were no laughing matter. In fact, prior to working for Santaco, Buthelezi was the Group CEO of South African National Transport Solutions, a transport training agency that was also responsible for getting the various Gauteng Province taxi

associations in on the 2010 Fifa World Cup “park and ride” systems.

Never the less, the idea of the taxi industry launching an airline in the period of just a few months did seem a little farfetched. Buthelezi himself was at that time quoted as saying, “We are launching the airline in September. During the launch we’ll do a proper announcement in terms of when is what happening. We don’t have aircraft, a pilot and we don’t have a crew ourselves. We don’t have a license. So we have to hire those.”

Nevertheless, South African journalist Sipho Hlongwane who interviewed Buthelezi, noted in an article, “Once you look at a few industry statistics, it makes

sense why Santaco can blithely ignore all the scorn heaped upon minibus taxis and comfortably decide to launch a low-cost airline.”

Hlongwane quoted statistics from the road safety awareness Arrive Alive website pointing out, “Minibus taxis account for about 65 per cent of all public transport in the country. There are about 150,000 of them out there, transporting 15 people at a time to and from destinations, and making dozens of such trips in a day.

This all adds up to an estimated R16.5 billion in revenue every year. And Santaco is the biggest taxi association in the country and the only one recognised by the government. The clout of the minibus taxi industry and its representatives cannot be underestimated.”

Fanfare

By September 16 when Santaco Airlines was launched by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma with great fanfare at Johannesburg’s privately owned (as opposed to state-owned) Lanseria International Airport, the only people still laughing were Santaco members who were enjoying the discomfort of those who had doubted their seriousness.

Santaco Airlines is scheduled to begin operating flights by late November or early December between Johannesburg’s Lanseria airport, Bisho airport in the rural Eastern Cape Province, and Cape Town International.

Air Aquarius, which currently works with SA Express and SA Airlink, will supply the 100-seater aircraft, crew and licenses, with Santaco expected to take over aviation operations in 18 to 24 months.

“Our potential is to make a bush into a city,” Santaco president Jabulani Mthembu said in reference to the airline’s focus on regional airports.

Mthembu is confident the aviation

The airline wants to shake off the perception that air travel is only for the rich

”

model will work as commuters would be taken from the taxi rank to the airport, then transported to a taxi rank at their destination.

The Lanseria-to-Bisho route made the most sense to Santaco as it caters for urban black South Africans who might otherwise have to make a 14-hour taxi journey from the big city to their village for a funeral or some other traditional ceremony, only to have to return home five hours later.

Basically, Santaco Airlines’ prospective customers are the people who might ordinarily take a minibus taxi on a long journey, but now have a little more money to spend —in other words, the country’s growing middle class of black consumers.

The airline wants to shake off the perception that air travel is only for the rich.

Prices Tickets will be offered for purchase at minibus taxi ranks, and ticket prices, which by the time of writing, have yet to be announced, will be inclusive of transport from a taxi rank to the airport, and then transportation to a taxi rank at the final destination.

In a report on the inaugural flight, the reporter for South Africa’s The New Age newspaper wrote that invited dignitaries for an inaugural flight on Santaco Airlines “Were treated like royalty and were welcomed aboard by warm smiles from the attendants

who assisted everyone to their seats — unlike the rude taxi marshals who at times choose where you should sit.”

While in mid-air on the inaugural flight, a 10 rand ($1.30) banknote was passed from the back of the aircraft to the front, as is done among taxi customers.

“When the note got to the front it was passed back as it was alleged the pilot did not have change,” the New Age reported.

“This caused much laughter in the plane as most people could identify with the no change issue.”

It remains to be seen whether Santaco Airlines will grow from strength to strength, but what is for sure is that Santaco is a significant venture in South Africa. According to one analyst, “It will be the largest fully black South African-owned airline, with more than 100,000 taxi owners said to be shareholders, and has received praise for the “brave step” by President Jacob Zuma.”

Mwangi Githahu is a Kenyan journalist who now lives in South Africa. He contributes a weekly column to The Weekend Star and was for three years until April 2011 the Features editor at The Star.

He has written for a number newspapers and magazines for the past two decades, including, the Sunday Nation, The East African, Eve Magazine and the defunct Weekly Review.

January 2012

| 41

Opinion |

Legal Watch

Legal Opinion

BY GLADYS MBOYA

Aviation Finance

A

PHOTOGRAPHY | THINKSTOCK.COM

viation finance is the means by which an aircraft is financed for the purposes of purchase or operations.

Aviation finance is unique among forms of finance, due to its inherent international nature, its sheer volume and capital intensity.

Aircraft also have a comparatively predictable future value and their owners/operators are able to get financing at low rates.

The principal security in any aircraft finance is generally the aircraft itself. The most commonly used financing schemes are title financing, operating leases and secured lending. Other financing tools are tax leases, residual value guarantees, predelivery payment facilities, export credit and securitization.

Title Finance Title-financing is where the financier retains title to the asset, and the customer acquires some lessor, usually possessory, interest. Historically, by far the most common form of title financing structure adopted by most financiers is Financial Lease – usually (but not necessarily) with a purchase option.

Finance leasing is similar to hire purchase in that it is a contract under which the financier agrees to lease the aircraft to the lessee for a period of time. As in hire purchase, rental is typically determined by reference to the capital cost. However, a finance lease does not contain an option to purchase, and is a contract of bailment only.

The finance lease sometimes involves very sophisticated structures to obtain finance.

However, what normally happens, at a basic level, is that a lessor purchases the aircraft through a special purpose company (SPC) and all the rights of the SPC (the lessor) are transferred to the banks, but the obligations are not transferred, e.g. the obligation to sell the aircraft at the end of the term.

The banks control the SPC and therefore ownership, but they are not responsible for the liability of the lessor. The airline (lessee) 42 |

also enters into a lease with the lessor. Of course this means that the airline is taking a credit risk on the SPC because the airline will have no recourse against the bank. The airline may then have the option to purchase the aircraft at the end of the lease.

The International Accounting Standard 17 (2002) (IAS 17) defines finance leases as any lease arrangement under which the lessee has substantially all the risks and rewards of ownership. The classification as a finance lease must be made at the inception of the lease.

The rental payments are made periodically and they usually cover the principal and interest. If, for whatever reason, termination of the lease occurs, a sum is payable for early termination. At the end of the lease the lessee has the option to purchase the asset at a price which is expected to be sufficiently lower than the fair value at the date the option becomes so exercisable that, at the inception of the lease, it is reasonably certain that the option will be exercised.

While the legal form of a financial lease is that of a leasing transaction, its substance is that of a secured financing transaction.

Therefore under the accounting rules the aircraft is recorded as an asset of the lessee’s company – the capitalized value of rights in the asset (which is subject to depreciation) – and it is also recorded as a liability to make payments to the lessor; rentals paid are allocated between a capital element (which reduces the outstanding liability) and interest expense on the liability; the lessor does not record a physical asset but, rather, a debtor for rental receivable – the rentals are allocated between a capital element (which reduces the debt) and interest income.

Foreign financiers tend to favour title finance. The primary reason is the obvious one – the financier’s security is his retention of title. Aircraft are, of course, highly mobile assets, and a security interest created in one jurisdiction may not be enforceable in another (for want of registration).

Operating Leases An operating lease is quite different from a finance lease – they both give rise to bailments, but they perform different commercial functions.

An operating lease is more in the nature of a short-term hire. In an operating lease the main risks and rewards are with the lessor.

The lease is not normally for the entire useful life of the asset and the lessor can re-lease it to several other lessees in order to regain his capital outlay and profits. Therefore the lessee does not take the residual value risk in the asset.

Operating leases are attractive to carriers who need to expand or to meet high demand.

They are a useful tool for managing a large fleet of aircraft. Start-up ventures will normally prefer operating leases, as do those who lack a strong credit history or the funds to purchase directly.

Some airlines will use operating leases to improve their balance sheet ratios. Thus their flexible nature makes them very popular.

Related to this are sale and leaseback transactions; these involve the airline selling its aircraft for cash, then leasing the same aircraft back from the operating lessor for a periodic payment. This method is advantageous to the airline because it provides them with cash for operations and expansion and similarly the operating lessors get attractive returns.

IAS 17 defines an operating lease as “… a lease other than finance lease”.

In the case of operating leases, the substance accords with the legal form, and therefore the lessee records rentals payable as an expense; and the lessor records its ownership interest in the physical asset – which is subject to depreciation. Rentals received and receivable are recorded as income.

There are a number of variants in operating and finance leases, such as leveraged leases, non-leveraged leases and service leases.

However, these variants are not separate types of leases but, rather, descriptive forms of the basic types.

Secured Lending Secured lending is where the customer takes title to the asset, but creates a security interest – such as a Mortgage or Charge.

The airline industry operates in an extremely dynamic environment.

Its cyclical nature gives rise to profit volatility and innovation in aviation finance is key to ensuring minimization of risk ”

From a financial point of view there is hardly any difference between secured financing and title finance; the difference between the two is in their legal definition. The bank’s main concern will be to ensure that they have access to the aircraft and are able to repossess the aircraft in the event of default. Banks will also want to know whether any local laws allow for certain liens and charges to take priority over their mortgage, especially if the aircraft is registered or situated in a different jurisdiction.

In Kenya financiers (notably banks) appear to favour mortgages, mainly because this is the structure with which they are most familiar. Local financiers tend to finance smaller (and thus less mobile) aircraft, which typically operate within Kenya or the region.

Kenya does not have a dedicated aircraft mortgage registry, however an aircraft mortgage (for companies) is registrable under the Companies Act, and local registration of a security provides more comfort to a local financier than it does to a foreign one.

By way of further “security”, the borrower may be required to execute a “de-registration power of attorney” in favour of the financier.

Other Financing Schemes 1) Residual Value Guarantees: These only apply to finance leases and synthetic operating leases. This is an agreement under which the manufacturer guarantees the airline/financiers that the resale value of that aircraft will be at least a certain amount of the purchase price at a specific time in the future.

2) Pre-Delivery Payment Financing (PDPS): These are stage payments payable by the airline during the construction process.

3) Export Credit Financing: This is government financing of the export of domestically produced aircraft.

Registration of Aircraft Registration of aircraft is regulated by the Chicago Convention on International Aviation 1944. An aircraft may only be registered in one jurisdiction at a time. Each jurisdiction

prescribes what conditions need to be satisfied for an aircraft to be eligible for registration in its registry. An aircraft must be de-registered in the original state before it can be registered in a different jurisdiction.

Kenya has not (unlike many other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom) formalized a dedicated register for security interests in aircraft under its laws. However, security interests are frequently reflected on the certificate of registration and, accordingly, the international system for registration of civil aircraft provides an important source of comfort. Accordingly, in the case of a financial lease, the certificate will reflect the name of the financier as “owner”, and that of the borrower as “lessee/operator”, and, for a mortgage, it will reflect the name of the borrower as “owner/operator”, and that of the financier as “mortgagee”, Further, “de-registration undertaking” is obtained from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority – not to de-register the aircraft without the financier’s consent and to deregister the aircraft upon demand by the financier. It is important to note that, in Kenya, neither ownership nor mortgagee’s rights will take precedence over a lien by airport authorities for non-payment of airport charges.

Jurisdiction The jurisdiction of the intended governing law must be stated in the contract. The governing law is only as good as the court in the place of its interpretation. Therefore it is important to ensure that the choice of governing law is valid. Under the rules of private international law, the validity of a transfer of a tangible asset such as an aircraft is governed by the law of the country where the aircraft is situated at the time of transfer (lex situs).

A Dynamic Environment The airline industry operates in an extremely dynamic environment. Its cyclical nature gives rise to profit volatility and innovation in aviation finance is key to ensuring minimization of risk. A proper financial and legal strategy is important when considering the purchase of an aircraft.

Gladys Mboya is an Advocate and the Managing Partner of Mboya Wangong’u & Waiyaki Advocates with over fifteen years experience in Commercial and Corporate practice, including Corporate Finance; Aviation Finance, Banking and Securities.

She holds a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Warwick , a Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and a Diploma in Law from the Kenya School of Law. January 2012

| 43

Business |

Fleet Order

Record-breaking dollar value order is another milestone for Emirates and affirms strategy to expand long haul destinations and continue to excel as a world leading carrier

Emirates Places $18-billion Boeing Order at Air Show and three freighters.

Emirates had 40 777-300 ERs already on the order books, so with November’s order that now stands at a firm order of 90 777-300 ERs. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed AlMaktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline and Group, and Jim Albaugh, President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, signed the agreement during a ceremony at the Dubai Air Show.

Emirates senior executives Tim Clark, President, Emirates airline and Adel Al-Redha, Emirates Executive Vice President, Engineering and Operations as well as David Joyce, President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Aviation, were also present at the signing ceremony.

Proud Moment DEAL SEALED: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid AlMaktoum (centre, standing), VicePresident and Prime Minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, looks on as Emirates, Boeing and GE Aviation officials take part in a signing ceremony at the Dubai Airshow.

44 |

E

mirates Airline placed a $18 billion (AED66 billion) order for 50 Boeing 777s, the US aircraft maker’s largest biggest-ever single order in dollar terms, at the Dubai Air Show mid-November.

The order also included 20 777300 ER options valued at $8 billion for a total of 70 aircraft valued at $26 billion.

This record-breaking long-range aircraft order adds to Emirates’ existing world’s largest fleet of 95 777s in service, including nine 200 ERs, 10-200 LRs, 12-300s, 61-300 ERs

GE Aviation’s GE 90-115B engine will power the 777-300 ER aircraft.

“With 61 777 300-ERs currently in service, this record-breaking dollar value order is another milestone for Emirates and affirms our strategy to expand our long haul destinations

and continue to excel as a world leading carrier, connecting the world to Dubai and beyond,” said Sheikh Ahmed.

“The Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft plays a pivotal role in Emirates development of a modern fleet to meet the demand for global air travel for the future.”

The 777-300ER will be operated in a three-class configuration with eight First Class suites, 42 Business Class seats and 310 Economy Class seats and offers an additional cargo payload of 20.1 tons.

“This is an extremely proud moment for us as it not only underscores Emirates’ ongoing confidence in the 777 but also makes this the single largest order in dollar value in Boeing’s history,” said Albaugh.

Continued Innovations

“As the largest operator of the 777 in the world, Emirates has played an important role in development of the airplane and its input over the years has been invaluable in the development of the 777 programme.”

Emirates President Tim Clark said: “Today’s 777-300 ER order gives Emirates the ability to replace some of our older existing aircraft, allowing us to maintain our leadership in fuel efficiency as well as providing our customers with an updated superior product.”

He said passengers could look forward to continued innovations in aircraft comfort, entertainment and service.

Emirates currently has a fleet of 162 wide-bodied aircraft, flying to 115 destinations in 67 countries. The airline is on track to become one of the largest airlines in the world.

In addition to the 50 777-300 ERs announced in November, Emirates has 73 Airbus A380s, 70 Airbus A350s, 40 777-300 ERs and six Boeing freighters on order, for a total of 239 wide-body aircraft worth more than $92 billion (AED337.6 billion).

This report was first published in Arab News.com January 2012

| 45

Business |

Public Offer

Hard Target: A precision Air plane. Below, Precision Air Managing Director Alfonse Kioko

Precision Air was seeking to raise close to $16.5 million from the IPO for modernization and expansion of its fleet

Precision Air IPO Undersubscribed

T

anzania’s biggest airline, Precision Air, has sold less than half its initial public share offering, with brokers saying investors were keeping their cash for a share placement from Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL).

Precision Air was seeking to raise close to $16.5 million from the IPO for modernization and expansion of its fleet, but managed to collect just TSh11.84 billion.

Precision’s IPO ran from October 7 to November 4 and the sale of East African Breweries Limited’s (EABL) 20% stake in TBL started on November 4 and closed on Nov ember 25.

“The IPO was largely undersubscribed because investors were not comparing Precision Air with any other airline, they were comparing it with TBL, which appeared to be more attractive to some of the investors,” Laurean Malauri, CEO of Orbit Securities, sponsoring broker for the IPO, commented.

“The fact that there were delays in getting approvals from the Kenyan Stock Market regulator has led to a

46 |

They

were comparing it with TBL, which appeared to be more attractive to some of the investors

”

negligible participation of foreign investors in the IPO. By the time the IPO came, it was too late for Kenyan investors to participate.

The airline had set aside up to 49% of the 58.8 million shares on offer to foreign investors.

Plan

However, some foreign business analysts say that the airline’s management may have expected too much from the foreign investors compared to focusing on raising a bulk of the funds from the local investor pool.

“The IPO was still a success

because the aim was to increase public ownership of the airline, and retail investors were the majority of the buyers,” said Malauri.

Precision Air is working on another financing plan to meet the funds gap after the under-subscription.

The airline has submitted a financial plan to relevant authorities explaining how the funds raised from the IPO would be invested and outlining the strategies of filling the financial gap to ensure that its goals are met fully.

In a statement by Precision Air Managing Director Alfonse Kioko, it was clear that 6,667 investors had participated in the IPO but a turnaround would be realized once Precision Air was listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange on December 15.

Before the IPO was announced, Kenya Airways owned 49% of Precision Air, with the remainder being owned by the chairman and founder of the airline, Michael Shirima. Shirima’s stake was made available for sale during the IPO. Currently, Shirima owns 35.52% of the airline, Kenya Airways 34.13% and the public 30.35%.

Kenyan’s Plan to fly Planes Using Mobile Phone Technology A 37-year-old engineer is flexing his innovation muscles by aspiring to be the first African to fly an unmanned aircraft using the latest mobile phone technology.

Nyaga Ouko is no ordinary Kenyan. As a child, Ouko grew up with aviation books around him given to him by his father, who had his own ambitions to become an aviator, although he had to give up his ambition then in favour of staying at home to take care of the family farm.

Upon finishing high school, Ouko moved to Nairobi in 1994, where he proceeded to study aviation engineering at a local college.

The young engineer and pilot was one of the participants in the inaugural edition of The Next

Big Thing, with his cutting edge innovation on how to bring down the cost of navigating airlines and the charges that passengers incur from the same.

“Navigation equipment and services are very expensive, a price that is loaded onto passengers in the form of charges and taxes,” he says.

The system he has in mind uses mobile phone technology to measure aircraft ground speed and measure altitude, amongst other things.

Ouko argues that his innovation would see mobile phone technology integrated into the aircraft and on the ground to help in navigation.

If he is successful in his desire, Ouko could create a system that could reduce airport aircraft congestion by up to 30%.

Royal Jordanian Heading to Nairobi

Kenya will soon see another airline making regular visits to Nairobi.

Starting December Royal Jordanian will commence flights to Nairobi, initially 4 times a week every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday with the respective return flights taking off from JKIA in the early hours of Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Royal Jordanian will be us-

ing an Airbus A319 on the route in a two class configuration. The new connection will open up further opportunities for trade and doing business between Jordan and East Africa as a whole and allow for visits to the parts of the Holy Land located in what today is the Kingdom of Jordan.

This move is preceded by the launch of flights to Lagos, initially served twice a week using an Airbus A330.

Biz bytes

>> Students to Represent Kenya at Tourism Conference Two girls from a school in Murang’a County have represented Kenya at an international tourism conference.

The students, Loreen Gachambi and Peris Wangui, both of Kamahuha Girls’ High School in Murang’a South District, were all smiles after a panel picked them as the winners of a Global Travel and Tourism Partnership award. Issues surrounding the growth of tourism were expected to take centre-stage during the conference.

“Kenya is a tourist destination. A lot has to be done to double the number of tourists flying to our game parks and other attraction centres,” said Peris Wangui.

The students flew out to Monaco on the morning of November 19. “The school has been producing responsible students, and the President of the Students’ Council came from here,” said the head teacher, Ms. Florence Ngarari.

>> Aviation Players Endorse Airport Authority’s Expansion Plans

Aviation industry stakeholders have welcomed Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) plans to expand and modernize the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). Speaking during a fourth breakfast meeting, industry players lauded the KAA for its efforts to upgrade infrastructure and enhance customer service.

“With all indicators pointing to Africa as the next economic growth frontier, it is very important that we have a very robust transportation infrastructure and part of these changes come slowly such as the expansion of our local airports like JKIA,” said Kenya Airways CEO.

January 2012

| 47

Business |

Incidents

Baldwin apologizes to passengers, not airline

A

lec Baldwin issued an apology early December to fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight that was delayed by his refusal to stop playing a cellphone game — but stopped short of apologizing to the airline or the flight attendant he later mocked on Twitter.

The 30 Rock actor’s note, posted to the Huffington Post (http://huff.to/ sENHR2 ), instead lamented the state of modern air travel. Baldwin noted the financial struggles of airlines, saying the result is that air travel has devolved into an inelegant experience, akin to riding a Greyhound bus.

Baldwin said the level of service on US carriers has deteriorated.

“Filthy planes, barely edible meals, cuts in jet service to less-traveled locations,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin writes that increased security on commercial airplanes post-9/11 has resulted in a “paramilitary” aura around air travel.

“September 11th was a horrific day in the airline industry, yet in the wake of that event, I believe carriers and airports have used that as an excuse to make the air travel experience as inelegant as possible,” Baldwin writes.

Extremely Vocal

Baldwin’s letter is the latest volley in a dustup with American Airlines, with the airline taking to social media Wednesday to maintain it was following federal regulations when it booted an “extremely vocal customer” from a flight for refusing to shut off his cellphone.

The airline, which earlier cited passenger privacy in declining to discuss the matter, said on its Facebook page it decided “to provide the actual facts of the matter” after Baldwin stated publicly he had gotten kicked off the flight.

The company never cited the 30 Rock TV star by name.

Baldwin took to Twitter after

48 |

Baldwin’s letter is the latest volley in a dustup with American Airlines, with the airline taking to social media to maintain it was following federal regulations

A flight attendant on American reamed me out for playing a game on cellphone

”

Baldwin said

Tuesday’s incident at Los Angeles International Airport, saying he was asked to leave a New York-bound plane after a “flight attendant on American reamed me out” for playing a game on his cellphone. Baldwin said he was playing Words With Friends while the plane sat at a gate.

American said on Facebook on December 7 that Federal Aviation Administration regulations require that cellphones and other electronic devices be turned off as soon as the airliner’s door has been closed. The company said Baldwin refused to comply.

“The passenger ultimately stood up (with the seat belt light still on for departure) and took his phone into the plane’s lavatory,” American Airlines said. “He slammed the lavatory door so hard, the cockpit crew heard it and became alarmed, even with the cockpit door closed

and locked. They immediately contacted the cabin crew to check on the situation.”

The airline added that Baldwin was “extremely rude” to the flight crew, calling people “inappropriate names” and using offensive language.

Baldwin’s spokesman, Matthew Hiltzik, said it was the flight attendant who acted inappropriately. He said other people on the plane were violating the regulation and that Baldwin was singled out.

Won’t Fly American Again

“The plane was already delayed half-an-hour at the gate when Alec was playing Words with Friends,” Hiltzik told The Associated Press.

“Other passengers who tweeted flagrantly violated these rules without any repercussions — proving that they were obviously selectively enforced.” Airport police have said

they did not respond to the incident.

Baldwin deactivated his Twitter account and all of his previous tweets were removed.

Hiltzik said that was because the actor was setting aside his Twitter activity to concentrate on 30 Rock.

At least one other celebrity came to Baldwin’s defense on Twitter.

Boxing great Oscar De La Hoya, who was on the same flight, tweeted that he thought the flight attendant overreacted.

“AlecBaldwin was doing nothing wrong but playing Words on his phone,” De La Hoya said.

Baldwin boarded another American Airlines flight to New York after the incident, but said he wouldn’t fly with American again. In the tweets that have since been removed,

Baldwin mocked American Airlines as a company “where Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950s find jobs as flight attendants”.

He also called Words With Friends an “addicting” game. Players compete online to score the most points by building words with tiles on a Scrabble-like game board.

Baldwin plays the role of the vain executive Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock and played an amorous ex-husband to Meryl Streep in the 2009 romantic comedy It’s Complicated.

He also is featured in a series of comical TV ads for Capital One credit cards. In one spot Baldwin strolls through an airport and luxuriates on an airplane while surrounded by a coterie of assistants.

Firstnation Airways Debuts in Nigeria

A new carrier, FirstNation Airways, has started operations in Nigeria with an inaugural flight carrying over 200 passengers between Lagos and Abuja on November 3. The flight was conducted with the airline’s A320 aircraft.

“It was a very smooth flight; really, it’s a breath of fresh air,” remarked one of the passengers after flying from Abuja to Lagos.

FirstNation notes that the flights were not advertised as the airline needed to await all regulatory approvals. FirstNation notes further that its airport staffers, proudly and neatly dressed in the airline’s green and white colours (with a red neck-scarf for the ladies), were on hand at the ticketing

and check-in counters to attend to customers. The Chairman of the airline, Kayode Odukoya, had announced plans to launch the new carrier which generated much excitement among air travellers in Nigeria as they anticipated a new choice in fulfilling their air travel needs.

Currently, the Nigerian Civil Avation Authority (NCAA) has placed stringent conditionalities for entry or renewal of licence of airlines based on a recertification programme which Nigerian airlines are striving to successfully undergo.

The recertification process is a sort of guarantee to improve safety performance among Nigerian carriers and to maintain the zero-accident record of commercial airlines in Nigeria.

Biz bytes >>East Africa Hoping For Fly Dubai Interest

Dubai’s low cost airline ‘Fly Dubai’ is eyeing over 40 destinations by the end of 2011. This has raised hopes in Eastern African aviation circles, that after the recent opening of the route between Dubai to Addis Ababa other destinations like Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Entebbe could be on the airline’s drawing board.

The airline is presently flying to 36 destinations from its hub in Dubai, all within a 5 hour range, and the key Eastern African airports fall into that bracket.

The success of Sharjah’s low cost airline ‘Air Arabia’ on the route to Nairobi, which has led to the airline increasing its frequencies to daily flights, hints to Fly Dubai that there is room for a lot more traffic, especially in the low cost segment of the market, which has hitherto been rather underrepresented in the traffic uplift by conventional full service airlines.

Fly Dubai, has been about two years in operation, and is presently taking delivery of NG B737800’s at a record pace, with a total of 50 such state-of-the-art single-aisle planes on order and due to join the fleet over the next four years.

>> Qatar Airways Reaching Further in EA Qatar Airways sees potential for expansion of its services after connecting the major commercial centers in the region.

“We are in the process of expansion in Africa, especially East Africa, where we see more potential for growth as these countries are underserved, underestimated and, at the same time, their full potential is unutilized, Chief Executive Officer Qatar Airlines Akbar al-Baker said.

East Africa is a much-sought-after destination for many carriers and many entrants into this fertile market usually face stiff competition from established brand names..

January 2012

| 49

TRAVELLER’S TALES: Electrifying Pachyderms - P80 ISSUE No. 0001 January 2012

PEOPLE

PLACES

IDEAS

EMERGING THREATS TO EA TOURISM AND NATURAL HERITAGE - P96

Ex-Poachers Get New Chance Through P58 Eco-Tourism Nairobi, the Silicon Valley of Sanitation P88

Italian Photo Exhibition P94

Contents January 2012

East African Flyer |

Cover Story |

Editorial: ...................................................................... 55

Cover Story | Aviation Pioneer Lord Enniskillen............................64

Features | Environmental Notebook: Batwa Dancers............................................................ 58 Traveller’s Tales: Electrifying Perchyderms........... 80 Big Idea Forum: Sanergy........................................... 88 Foreigners: Gabriel Teo.............................................. 85 Event of The Month: Italian Art Exhibition..............94

SUBSCRIBE To the East Africa Flyer and get 20% Discount

P64

Essay/Conversation | Serengeti....................................................................... 96

Editorial Team PUBLISHER Professional and Advisory Management Consultants P. O. Box 636 -00100 Nairobi email; pamc@aviationeastafrica.co.ke CHAIRMAN Eric Mwandia emwandia@aviationeastafrica.com CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Samuel Kahiga skahiga@aviationeastafrica.com COMMISSIONING EDITOR Wycliff Muga wmuga@aviationeastafrica.com CONSULTING EDITOR Matt K. Gathigira mgathigira@aviationeastafrica.com

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DISCLAIMER

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material.No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permissionfrom the publisher. The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors. Return undeliverable copies to: East African Flyer Magazine, Woodley, Ngong Road, Box 636 - 00100 GPO, Tel: +254 020 8019387, Email: sales@aviationeastafrica.com, www.aviationea.com

Welcome January 2012

THE REGION’S AVIATION LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE

A Supplement of Aviation East Africa

EDITORIAL

By Aviation East Africa

Chairman Eric Mwandia

About East African Flyer...

E

AFlyer is a lifestyle magazine with a difference. It is aimed to reach a niche audience, a vertical market with more disposable income than any other single segment of the region’s populations. Potential key advertisers in elite or specialized categories affiliated to aviation, people and places – please take note.

This dynamic target audience is served by many other media products, including global brands available online. But EAFlyer is unique in being a product of our region and bringing Kenyan, Ugandan, Tanzanian, Rwandese, Burundian, South Sudanese and Horn of Africa perspectives and priorities to bear on the subject, sector, industry and market of aviation.

Our inaugural Cover Story, an in-depth interview

with Andrew Lord Enniskillen, a hereditary member of the House of Lords, airman, pioneer aviation entrepreneur and one-time CEO of CFC Bank and Kenya Airways, blazes the trail for many more rare, world class treatments of the grand theme of aviation in our region.

The EAFlyer interview with Lord Enniskillen was conducted by our Commissioning Editor, Wycliffe Muga, and is full of hindsight, insight and not a little foresight. Its poignant reminiscences and broad views of the long flight and trajectory of the story of private commercial aviation in our region CoverStory |

ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN

Sunbird’s first twin-engine aircraft, an 8-seater Cessna 401, flies past the peaks of Mt. Kenya in 1969.

Lord, Airman and Pioneer Aviation Entrepreneur Enniskillen flew without oxygen and the dew on his boots turned to icicles at 19,000ft

I

t was the American aviator, author and filmmaker Ernest K. Gann who once said, “There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part-bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever” .

Emerging from a wide-ranging interview with ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN for our inaugural Cover Story/Big Interview, 64 |

East African Flyer Commissioning Editor WYCLIFFE MUGA was left in no doubt whatever that this nobleman who made his home in Kenya (he became a citizen in 1972) is an airman in the meaning of Gann’s great distinction, rather than merely a pilot. Lord Enniskillen himself makes this clear, saying what he had for flying was not merely a passion but, “It was a passion for the technical challenge, the excitement – you know, you are up there with the best and the worst that nature can throw at you on your own – and, more latterly, the opportunity for a career in flying”.

Today, aged 69, his reminiscences as a pioneer plane owner and flyer in Kenya in the 1960s and ’70s are the stuff that legends are made of.

This is the man who, as a young British soldier based at the Kahawa Barracks in the early 1960s not only owned a canvas aeroplane (the way others owned motorcycles, sports cars or boats) but who, one fine dew-speckled morning, hopped into the plane and, knowing full well that its manufacturers had specified it could fly at a maximum height of 13,000ft tops, nonetheless overflew Mount Kilimanjaro in it, coaxing the craft to 19,500ft.

Enniskillen flew without oxygen and the dew on his boots turned to icicles at that height. This was not the first time that he would tax the three-seater, of which he fondly says, “She was a remarkable aeroplane. Very forgiving”.

Enniskillen came back to Kenya for the second time in 1961, the year Gann in faraway America published Fate is the Hunter, his best-selling aviation memoirs written like an adventure story, and stayed 18 months, in the course of which he got married.

He returned for good in the mid ’60s, trying his hand first at managing a 30,000acre cattle ranch in Rumuruti owned by his uncle and then retraining as a pilot at Wilson Airport, this time a commercial

EDITORIAL

About East African Flyer... have the quality of a good memoir. Many more Big Interview features will be coming your way in our pages.

Our features and departments will include personalities, destinations, achievements, innovations, quality aviation merchandise, services and products. Itineraries, both ordinary and extraordinary as well as elite, will be covered and showcased in some detail.

Exemplary life stories and life lessons, such as the saga of “The Tourist Who Became the Resident Good Samaritan of Idsowe”, the story of Gabriel Teo, a Malaysian volunteer missionary who lives and works among some of Kenya’s poorest people, in the Foreigners regular feature, will be a staple of the People department of EAFlyer.

The Event of the Month feature will focus on cocktail parties, art, fashion and other shows, exhibitions and openings, showcasing one outstanding event every month in a photo essay and accompanying speech, deep caption, or other narrative.

The Environment and Conservation departments, which include the Flying Green feature, will focus on all things environmental as they impact on the aviation sector, business and industry. In our inaugural issue, Commissioning Editor Wycliffe Muga looks at an extraordinarily unfortunate unfolding state of affairs in his “Emerging

Threats to East African Tourism and Natural Heritage”. Two neighbouring ecosystems are on the verge of being destroyed forever by the thoroughly misguided and shortsighted ‘development’ policies of two of Africa’s reputedly otherwise most enlightened regimes, the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments.

In Flying Green, “Reducing the Footprint in the Sky”, Sam Kahiga looks at the aviation sector’s contribution to climate change and what can be done about it.

Our typical regular reader will be interested in and knowledgeable about the aviation lifestyle – a frequent flyer, no stranger to leafy suburb and gated community living, a habitué of luxury estates and membership and country clubs, a connoisseur of high-end automobiles, electronics, fine wines, foods, clothes and accessories. He or she will indulge in an elite sporting pursuit and, or be interested in the arts, drama, cinema and good books.

This is an unabashedly elite and big-spending audience. Also welcome to our pages are the many more throughout our region who actually aspire to the jet-set lifestyle. They are aiming high and some of them will no doubt make it.

To all of you and to those who have long wished to advertise their products, services and equipment where there is a readymade and affluent audience, we say a hearty Karibu aboard EAFlyer, the lifestyle and general interest magazine for those who have made it.

Feature |

Flying Green

New airports are being designed ‘green’ from the ground up.

By SAMUEL KAHIGA

Reducing the Footprint in the Sky T

he reality of climate change demands action from all industry sectors that contribute significantly to it. The aviation sector is no exception.

Whereas this sector is not considered a major contributor, recent developments and experiences clearly call for sustained research to determine the levels and come up with mitigating strategies.

From the 1960s air transport demand has increased by an average 10% per year.

This is projected to be sustained over the next four decades, putting even more pressure on the environment for the foreseeable future.

The aviation sector is wide. However, contribution to climate change is broken down into different facets – for instance, noise in airports during landing and takeoff as well as vehicular traffic serving the ever-expanding air business sector have been identified. This is more so at night, especially at airports near huge residential areas. Airports and airlines rely heavily

on ICT systems to ensure safe and efficient operations. With the ever-increasing demand for ICT services, data centres are becoming larger and larger. The effect on the environment at a single operator level is not significant. However, considering the number of operators and airports in the world, we are looking at significant quantities of CO₂.

Aircraft engine emissions are perhaps the greatest single focus in the sector for environmentalists. CO₂ emissions have been identified as a major cause of climatic change. There are now more indications of the harmful effects of nitrogen oxides and contrail-induced cirrus clouds. However, due to the complexity of climate physics and

chemistry, there are no conclusive studies yet on their dispersal and dissolution patterns as well as effects on the environment.

There are mitigating solutions that address these effects, and counter the aviation sector’s contribution. Governments have developed policies to address specific effects. These include, for instance, policies to help monitor fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions by airlines, a factor that we shall be discussing in detail in the coming issues.

ICT operations are being addressed by use of shared terminals and facilities. There is a push to introduce cloud computing, where airport operators subscribe and pay for processing and storage tasks in the cloud.

Aircraft design addressing fuel efficiency, alternative fuel and even solar-powered propulsion is in the works. However, due to the high cost of aircraft, coupled with the low fleet aging and replacement rates, this means that any new development effects shall only be felt several decades down the line.

New airports are being designed ‘green’ from the ground up. Metro lines linking airports and cities are coming up to reduce pressure on road transport, while shared terminals and self-service kiosks are becoming more acceptable.

We have only one Earth, if it goes the Mars way, there is no chance for another.

Samuel Kahiga is the CEO of Aviation East Africa.

Environmental Notebook |

BATWA Dancers

Eco-Tourism Gives Ex-Poachers a New Chance Dance is a way of Life: A Batwa traditional dancer.

58 |

Hill country: A view of Iby’lwacu Cultural Village.

Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village is a community- owned and operated “cultural village”, run by ex-poachers, that replicates traditional tribal life in Rwanda. By Jonathan Kalan

A

ccording to legend in Rwanda, the Batwa people were born to dance.

One evening, so the lore goes, God found himself in need of lively entertainment and called on the people of heaven to dance. The first to begin were the Batwa (commonly known as Pygmies), who danced and howled and laughed well into the night until God was finally satisfied. He thanked his entertainment, permitting them to go home and retired to his quarters.

But the Batwa didn’t stop. They continued to dance until the early hours of morning, and, on multiple occasions, God was forced from his slumber, calling them to put a stop to it. Finally God had enough.

In a fit of fury he reached out, picked each one of them up and flung them straight down to the earth below. They landed in

the Parc National Des Volcans (Volcanoes National Park) in Rwanda, started dancing and have never stopped.

Perhaps it’s true. Or perhaps it’s not.

Fortunately for Leonidas Barora, a lively, 4-foot-10-inch 59-year-old toothless grinning Batwa tribe member from deep in park’s forest, at least one part is true;

Finally God had enough. In a fit of fury he reached out, picked each one of them up and flung them straight down to the earth below. They landed in the Parc National Des Volcans (Volcanoes National Park) in Rwanda, started dancing and have never stopped ”

he loves to dance. And it’s dancing that turned Leonidas from a poacher, who was responsible for the killing of countless animals inside the park, into a key part of a new model for environmental and cultural conservation in East Africa.

Established in 2005 with funding from Rwanda Eco-Tours Ltd., Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village is a community- owned and operated “cultural village”, run by expoachers, that replicates traditional tribal life in Rwanda.

As a park ranger in Parc National Des Volcans – one of Rwanda’s largest tourist destinations for being one of just a handful of places in East Africa where you can “track” families of mountain gorillas in their natural habitat – Edwin Sabuhoro, founder of Rwanda Eco-Tours, saw a painful situation playing out between the land, people, and animals. The problem? Poaching.

Like other famous National Parks in the region, such as the Masai Mara in Kenya, and Serengeti in Tanzania, the animals are a key element to attracting tourists. Yet for communities surrounding and in national Turn to P60

January 2012

| 59

Environmental Notebook |

From P59

parks, like Leonidas’ tribe, poaching the animals is simply a way of life, and, in many cases, the only way of life.

For these communities, the park’s wildlife is their primary source of food and income. While they struggle to earn a living under constant threats of being fined, jailed, and even shot at by park rangers, they are offered few alternatives. And, while the Parc National Des Volcans was only established in 1925, the people have been living there for centuries.

Edwin, who received a degree in Environmental Law prior to becoming a park ranger and was recently invited to the Young African Leaders Forum by President Obama for his work, realized that park management was far too “nature-centric”.

He felt there was too much focus on the conservation of the park, and too little effort to sustain the local people and communities that depend on it. He saw

60 |

BATWA Dancers

a pressing need to create a more equal balance, and put an end to poaching by “using the people and their own land”.

So in 2005, Edwin simultaneously founded the Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village, a community-owned-and- operated cultural village run by ex-poachers that replicates traditional tribal life in Rwanda, and Rwanda Eco-Tours, a for-profit eco-tourism company, to engage the private sector in animal, land and cultural conservation.

From the start he committed thousands of dollars to starting the Cultural Village, and has since committed 20% of Rwanda Eco-Tour’s profits to the village committee each year.

Launching the village, according to Edwin, was no easy task. Relationships between the poachers, the park officials, and the government had always been tense.

“They wanted to kill our method of survival”, one former poacher told me.

While poaching was illegal, neither the

They wanted to kill our method of survival ”

park nor government officials offered skills training, resources, or alternative methods of income generation for the people.

So when Edwin began approaching community elders of the Nyabigoma community, outside of Kinigi, Musanze District, Rwanda, about the possibility of a new path for their livelihoods, they were skeptical.

It wasn’t until he showed up one day with his life savings, $5,000, and a plan to help develop the Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village and a village-run committee to manage it, that they began to listen.

As I wandered in to Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village, just kilometers from the Congo and Ugandan borders in northwestern Rwanda (an entrance fee of $20 per visitor goes to the village committee and helps sustain the programmes), I immediately noticed that the village didn’t feel fake, forced, or fabricated as perhaps one would expect.

The feeling was casual but energetic, and there was a visible sense of pride from the

Airborne: A Batwa troupe in full cry.

locals fulfilling their roles in a “traditional” village. They seemed genuinely excited to be representing their culture, and were interested as much in an “exchange of experience” with tourists as they were in earning income.

Immanuel, my tour guide and a university-educated native of the Nyabigoma community that comprises the cultural village, explained the reason for this.

“There’s no reason for them not to be happy,” he said, “Visitors are a blessing in our culture. We are happy for people to visit our country, come into our homes, and share our culture. This is a culture that has a warm welcome to visitors and we hope that foreigners will become ambassadors”.

When Immanuel was younger his father, a former poacher, once spent two months in prison for poaching. “It was the only way he could afford my school fees at the time,” Immanuel said.

When Edwin approached the community to begin the Cultural Village,

Immanuel, humorous, engaging, and very well spoken in English, was elected by the village to become the lead tour guide. Now, several years later, he is finishing a degree in Business Management at night while giving tours and continuing to promote his community during the day.

He has been to Japan for conferences on Community Based Tourism, and, seeing firsthand the changes in his community through the Cultural Village, has become an ambassador for sustainable Community Based Tourism in the region.

When asked about the business incentives for Rwanda Eco-Tours to be giving away 20% of its profit to the village, Edwin says he is “proud of a business that is advancing our country”.

He sees his company, which is one of about 10 that now brings tourists to the village, as working to protect its business interests through its contributions. “While Turn to P62

January 2012

| 61

Environmental Notebook |

BATWA Dancers

From P61

I started this business specifically to help develop and promote my country, at the same time protecting the animals and the parks is simply good for our business and our bottom line”, he says.

While tourism is one alternative to sustaining the community in the absence of poaching, it’s not the only one. The Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village only directly employs 30 people – dancers, singers, drummers, guides, herbal healers, metalworkers, and others.

As part of Rwanda Eco-Tour’s 20% commitment, over $30,000 has been invested in the village committee. These funds, in addition to the revenue generated from the entrance fees, donations, and handicrafts sold in the village, go towards developing infrastructure, skills training, and horticulture programmes in the community (around 1,000 people) that give people a chance to earn income without depending on tourism.

Through these programmes, a sense of entrepreneurship is now emerging from villagers. Rurengo Enock, 71, the “Herbal

62 |

We’ve got rhythm: Batwa dancers and, inset, drummers, in action.

Man” of Iby’Iwacu whose secret herbal remedies have actually been passed down through his family for generations, now owns cows, goats, and land to farm – things he never had before.

“Life has made a significant improvement since poaching”, he told me.

Says one other local: “I have a house now, I have a bicycle now. I have a sheep now, but I want to have ten in five years”.

Out of the 1,000 community members of Nyabigoma around the Parc National Des Volcans, nearly all of whom were supported by poaching, perhaps only a few have continued to poach. In the Virunga Massif region, where Parc National Des Volcans is located, the mountain gorilla population has increased 26.3% since 2003.

One of the biggest changes, however, lies in the locals’ perception of their own destiny. They see the value of education, and understand the importance of sending their children to school instead of working on farms, or poaching. More importantly, they now have financial resources to do so.

Leonidas Barora, the lively Batwa pygmy dancer who most tourists will probably remember for years after their visit, broke out in laughter when I asked him if he had ever gone to school.

Growing up deep in the forest, he had no idea what a school was, what a teacher was, or what a formal education meant.

Now, one of his sons just graduated from a local secondary school, and in fact was the first Batwa pygmy in the history of the entire district ever to do so.

January 2012

| 63

CoverStory |

ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN

Sunbird’s first twin-engine aircraft, an 8-seater Cessna 401, flies past the peaks of Mt. Kenya in 1969.

Lord, Airman and Pioneer Aviation Entrepreneur Enniskillen flew without oxygen and the dew on his boots turned to icicles at 19,000ft

I

t was the American aviator, author and filmmaker Ernest K. Gann who once said, “There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part-bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever” .

Emerging from a wide-ranging interview with ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN for our inaugural Cover Story/Big Interview, 64 |

East African Flyer Commissioning Editor WYCLIFFE MUGA was left in no doubt whatever that this nobleman who made his home in Kenya (he became a citizen in 1972) is an airman in the meaning of Gann’s great distinction, rather than merely a pilot. Lord Enniskillen himself makes this clear, saying what he had for flying was not merely a passion but, “It was a passion for the technical challenge, the excitement – you know, you are up there with the best and the worst that nature can throw at you on your own – and, more latterly, the opportunity for a career in flying”.

Today, aged 69, his reminiscences as a pioneer plane owner and flyer in Kenya in the 1960s and ’70s are the stuff that legends are made of.

This is the man who, as a young British soldier based at the Kahawa Barracks in the early 1960s not only owned a canvas aeroplane (the way others owned motorcycles, sports cars or boats) but who, one fine dew-speckled morning, hopped into the plane and, knowing full well that its manufacturers had specified it could fly at a maximum height of 13,000ft tops, nonetheless overflew Mount Kilimanjaro in it, coaxing the craft to 19,500ft.

Enniskillen flew without oxygen and the dew on his boots turned to icicles at that height. This was not the first time that he would tax the three-seater, of which he fondly says, “She was a remarkable aeroplane. Very forgiving”.

Enniskillen came back to Kenya for the second time in 1961, the year Gann in faraway America published Fate is the Hunter, his best-selling aviation memoirs written like an adventure story, and stayed 18 months, in the course of which he got married.

He returned for good in the mid ’60s, trying his hand first at managing a 30,000acre cattle ranch in Rumuruti owned by his uncle and then retraining as a pilot at

Wilson Airport, this time a commercial pilot, a very different discipline from that of airman, and entering the field of commercial aviation. When the airman became the commercial pilot this accomplished aviator also became the pioneer aviation entrepreneur, graduating from privately owning one aeroplane in 1963 to operating a corporate fleet of 15 in 1976.

Lord Enniskillen’s recalling of the ups and downs of the aviation business in Kenya in the heyday of the small private operative on the regional safari circuit is unforgettable.

Enniskillen has lived a life touched by high adventure, even occasionally intrigue.

His Sunbird Aviation firm unwittingly flew the mercenaries who attempted to overthrow the Seychelles Government and re-install deposed President James Mancham, a buddy of powerful Kenyan Attorney-General Charles Njonjo’s.

This was the era of Fredrick Forsyth’s (author of The Day of the Jackal) The Dogs of War, which told the story of a company of European mercenaries hired by a British tycoon to overthrow the regime of the fictional African state of Zangaro.

Dogs waspublished in 1974 and filmed in 1980 and the Mancham coup attempt

against President France-Albert René was launched on November 25, 1981, when conspiracy theories and suspicions filled the air and Enniskillen was CEO of Kenya Airways. Although he came under deep suspicion from the media and political sectors, he insists that he and Sunbird were completely unaware of who the group of Europeans who registered themselves as a rugby team was or what they were really up to in the Seychelles. This group was led by the legendary mercenary Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare.

Somalia’s last functionaing government, the brutal Siad Barre regime, placed Enniskillen under house arrest for six weeks on suspicions of spying for the US Government during a uranium prospecting trip. He suffered a second house arrest episode under a second African dictator in Zaire, today’s DRC, in the 1970s during the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, when landing permission did not necessarily entail permission to leave within a week.

In the mid-seventies one of Sunbird’s aircraft – a Piper Aztec 5Y-ACS was leased out to Bruce McKenzie and Keith Savage to fly to Uganda to meet Idi Amin Dada.

Mackenzie was Kenya’s only Cabinet

Finally Enniskillen has lived a life touched by high adventure, even occasionally intrigue.

He was at Kahawa Barracks when the three East African armies of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania mutinied ”

minister of European extraction in the postIndependence era and had well-known connections to British, Israeli and South African Intelligence agencies. On his way back to Kenya with his compatriots, a time bomb planted by the murderous Amin’s agents exploded in the plane over the Ngong Hills, blowing them away.

Lord Enniskillen rightly claims credit for having saved Kenya from Green Monkey disease, a deadly precursor of AIDS that afflicted parts of South Sudan, Uganda and DRC, by alerting the authorities in Nairobi to an outbreal that was slowly spreading south towards Kenya from parts of Sudan.

What’s more, he was no stranger to emergency landings (in 1982, he ran out of fuel while flying a friend’s plane and came down safely on the Nairobi-Nakuru road, then under construction). He illegally overflew Amin’s Uganda on a mercy mission – rescuing a seriouisly injured engineer, despite the fact that he knew Amin’s men had surface-to-air missiles.

He will clearly never forget being falsely accused in the Kenyan Parliament of being a gunrunner for a then seriously powerful and influential public figure against whom such suspicions were never confirmed.

The Interview |

All this, and much more, is captured in the following excerpts of the great and vaulting conversations between Enniskillen and Muga, held in Nairobi in November, the first of Aviation East Africa’s Big Interview epic encounters.

nine miles outside Enniskillen, and I was raised pretty much there. I’ll come back to that. More recently, my great aunt Florence came out here in 1898 followed by my grandfather and great uncle. They were actually the first to come to Kenya.

Florence married Lord Delamere and they settled in Njoro, and of course she communicated with the rest of her family and presumably told them how exciting a country Kenya was. And two of her many brothers followed her and they took tracts of land.

When I say took, I mean bought from the British government at the time. I think they paid two shillings an acre, but it was a fortune in those days. In fact, my grandfather lost two fortunes in Kenya.

AVIATION EAST AFRICA- Tell us a little about your family – just as little or as much as you would like to say.

LORD ENNISKILLEN: My family emigrated from Cornwall to Ireland in 1600 or thereabouts. My ancestor went over and started a garrison town in Enniskillen and his successors became ennobled.

First of all was Sir William, then it became Viscount and then subsequent ancestors became the Earls of Enniskillen.

The family seat was at Florence Court,

Lord Enniskillen disembarks at Lanet, near Nakuru, on his way to presenting the Kenya Airways development and strategy report to President Daniel arap Moi at State House, Nakuru.

Q: Lost two fortunes?

A: Lost. He invested in Kikopey ranch, which is now a group ranch. My great uncle, Berkeley Cole, who for some reason seems to be more well-known because of his associations with Karen Blixen, took up land at Solio, which is still a ranch and 10,000 acres has been recently taken up by the Government for the resettlement of IDPs. Turn to P66

January 2012

| 65

CoverStory Foreigners | |

ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN

Lord Enniskillen, then Kenya Airways CEO, and Minister for Power and Communications, Isaac Omolo Okero, in the 1970s.

my father remained here and I was then raised with my mother and grandparents at Florence Court in Ireland.

Enniskillen shares notes with his colleague Graham Lowe in the Sunbird Charters days.

From P65

So that’s how the family first arrived in the country. My grandfather married Eleanor Balfour, who was the niece of the British Prime Minister, they settled at Kikopey and they had two sons, David and Arthur.

David was my father and I and my younger sister Linda were born in England. My mother was a paleontologist who worked extensively with Louis Leakey.

Q: Is she still alive, your sister?

A: Yes. Q: Here in Kenya?

A: Alive, living near Molo. So, I was not born in Kenya because at that time there was World War II, my father was serving and I was born in the barracks in Woking, England.

When the war was over, I came out in a troop ship with my family, landed in Mombasa, went straight to hospital with acute appendicitis and finally arrived at Solio, where I was initially raised. My parents sadly broke up pretty soon after that and I went back to UK with my mother while

66 |

Q: That was a family property?

A: Yes. It now belongs to the National Trust. To complete the story on family background, when I was an officer in the British Army an opportunity for posting to Kenya came up and because I spoke a bit of Swahili and knew the country, of course I was chosen as one of the officers to accompany my regiment to come back here in 1961. I spent 18 months here in that capacity, during which time two fairly momentous things happened.

One was the Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan army mutinies which I was part of reconciling and the other was that I met my wife Sarah and we got married out here before the company went back to London.

So we were married here, but immediately went back to London to serve in London, Germany and all over the place. I left the army, as a short service commissioned officer who extended for a further three years.

So I did six years in the army and I was given the choice either to become the ADC of the Governor of Hong Kong, which, as a married man, wasn’t entirely a suitable job and it was quite unusual to be offered it, or to come and manage for my uncle (my father’s brother) his ranch in Rumuruti and I chose the latter.

I came out here and managed 30,000 acres of cattle ranch up in Rumuruti and the genesis of my flying passion . . . I step back a bit. I broke my leg very badly while I was skiing on duty in the army.

I was in a plaster cast for 18 months, could do very little but I could stick my leg out of a car with the door off and drive and

stick my leg out of the door of an aeroplane and fly as long as somebody else operated the brakes of the airplane. I could manage the brakes of the car. So I decided to get myself a pilot’s license at Wilson and . . .

Q: You broke your leg skiing. That must have been in Europe somewhere.

So you came to Kenya with your broken leg?

A: Yes. And the reason it was 18 months in plaster in fact was because I didn’t know about these things but I’m told if you go from sea level to high altitude, for some reason bones don’t mend so well and although I was basically on the mend when I arrived, it broke again and I spent some time in the British military hospital down the road.

Q: What is it called now? Is it still a hospital?

A: I don’t know. It’s just down here opposite the ABC on the road going out of town it is now the military barracks on Waiyaki Way, Westlands. Anyway, that’s where I met my wife.

She came to visit a brother officer who was also in hospital. She used to walk past my door with her nose in the air to see her boyfriend next door, but being a wellbrought-up General’s daugther, she refused to catch my eye! Eventually she looked in and we went from there.

So, having learnt to fly I bought myself a little canvas aeroplane.

Q: Canvas?

A: Yes. It cost me £1,300 and I used it to take my fiancée, actually not my fiancée, my girlfriend, to Kidepo, because we had some friends out there who were starting Kidepo National Park.

Q: Where is that?

A: Kidepo is in North East Uganda.

Trouble country. Rebel country, even now.

Q: Of course, the moisture had begun to freeze.

A: So having got there, 19,500ft without oxygen is not totally sensible, but I was a young man and of course I believe somebody has actually climbed Everest without oxygen, but you need special ability and special training. So I thought I better get down quick and it took me about two hours to get up and about 30 minutes to get down.

Q: Of course, the Lord’s Resistance Army.

A: Yes. And it was a long flight. You know, a small canvas aeroplane and I had no map, just a diagram on the back of a matchbox actually.

So we set off. We had about a week up there during which time we got engaged and we went on our honeymoon in the same aeroplane down to the Coast.

Q: So you flew right over it at some point and then came down?

A: Right over the top. The other one, which reflects rather badly on me, is when I took my uncle, who was not a small man, myself, who was not a small man, and a friend, also equally large plus shotguns and a lot of shotgun ammunition from Kikopey to go to, somewhere in Rumuruti, I think, to shoot guinea fowl and we were grossly overloaded and the runway in Kikopey is not very long. We took off and I realized we were not going anywhere except down.

So we went down luckily – because the ground fell away – almost to lake level before I got enough speed to begin to climb and we managed to get up and over. She was a remarkable aeroplane. Very forgiving.

Q: It was a two-seater?

A: It was actually a three-seater, pilot upfront and two passengers behind. I learnt to fly in a similar sort of aeroplane, a canvas two-seater training aeroplane. Both of them were tail wheel.

Q: Tail wheel meaning?

A: Tail wheel means when it’s on the ground or very low speed, it sits back on the tail. You can hardly see outside and as the speed goes up, you can lift the tail and then you can see properly.

So, in some ways, they are more difficult to handle than a nose wheel which stands level on the ground.

Q: Now, you could drive, you could fly; not everyone who breaks a leg ends up developing a passion for flying. So what suddenly made you love being up in the air?

A: I think I may disappoint you, because it was never so much a passion for being in the air doing loops and so on and spending all my time at aero clubs talking about flying.

It was a passion for the technical challenge, the excitement – you know you are up there with the best and the worst that nature can throw at you on your own – and, more latterly, the opportunity for a career in flying.

I’ll quickly explain that. In this canvas aeroplane which I had on a private capacity and had learnt privately, I was now back on duty with my company here in Kenya and I had a forward-looking commanding officer who said, “quite honestly if you were doing duty or recces [reconnaissance] or whatever in your vehicle, we’d be paying you mileage allowance. Your aeroplane is far more useful to us than a vehicle and so we’ll pay you motor mileage allowance for use with the aeroplane”.

And so I was one of the first battalion pilots if you like, but I wasn’t employed as a pilot. But we did a lot of reconnaissance and transport and so on in my little aeroplane. I then left the Army . . .

Q: What’s the worst that might have happened if you had miscalculated given how much . . .

A: A forced landing on the shore of Elementaita or something . . .

Q: So it was pretty risky in its own way?

A: It didn’t appear so at the time, but it turned out to be.

Q: Was there any accident or a nearmiss, any story from those days just to give it a sense of time and place because that’s a very unusual aeroplane?

A: Yes. Two incidents might be of interest; obviously you are the judge of that. This aeroplane had what is technically called a service ceiling of 13,000ft, which means the performance of the aeroplane and the engine capacity wouldn’t normally take you above 13,000ft and I particularly wanted to take it over the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. So I set out one morning very early from Kahawa Barracks with less than 100 hours experience.

Q: Alone?

A: Alone at 6:30 in the morning, dew all over the grass and my feet were soaked and nearly two hours later, I reached 19,500ft over Kilimanjaro and my shoes were actually beginning to freeze.

Standing tall:

Lord Enniskillen in Nairobi in December 2011.

Q: It’s not something you would recommend anyone should try now?

A: Definitely not. But it’s not the most over-laden situation I’ve been in, only the first.

Q: So, that’s early days as a pilot, very interesting indeed. What came after this?

A: So then I moved to Rumuruti to manage these 30,000 acres of land which was 17 miles from one end to the other. It was not of course anything like so wide but, it was 17 miles, it was fully developed with fence lines every thousand yards and so I bought myself a bigger airplane and used to go farming by air. If there was dipping to be done at the top of the farm – it was a cattle ranch – if there was dipping to be done at the top of the farm, I would fly up. We Turn to P68

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From P67

collected the post by air. I went shopping by air. Petrol was I think something like two shillings a gallon and I had a little folding bicycle in the boot of the airplane and I was very mobile.

Q: So, the cost of fuel wasn’t a major consideration in those days?

A: It was almost the least consideration.

Q: As opposed to now when it is often the key consideration?

A: Absolutely. Not only the cost, but the availability. Sometimes it’s not available.

Q: Okay. So now you are a rancher who happens to have a private plane which is useful in many ways . . .

A: Very useful.

Q: Did you also use to spray crops with it? I know it was not equipped for that.

A: I’ve never done spraying. So, the next milestone, I suppose, and you must cut me short if I’m being too longwinded, next milestone was I was a very poorly-paid ranch manager for my uncle, managing a huge responsibility, I thought.

Three thousand head of cattle, 150 employees, 30,000 acres of land. In those days predators were a big threat and cattlerustling and theft was a daily occurrence, so it was a fascinating, challenging job for a young man. So I went to my uncle one day and said, ‘you tell me that I’m doing a good job for you. How about showing that in appreciation by raising my salary?’ to which his response was, ‘Never. I will never encourage you to remain as a ranch manager. Go out and do your thing and get on with life’.

So I did. I left and decided . . . at that stage . . . I have been a citizen since I can’t remember and Kenya has been my home, but, believe it or not, at that stage I didn’t qualify for Kenyan citizenship because I wasn’t born here, I hadn’t lived here consecutively for five years, and so I didn’t qualify.

So, I needed to consider a technical qualification that would allow the Government to say ‘you can stay here’ and so I chose aviation and became a professional pilot whilst I remained for the requisite five years and then applied for citizenship and I got my citizenship in 1972.

Q: But surely, there were other ways you could have been a citizen. You loved flying. It isn’t that this was your only path to citizenship.

A: Well it was a path. I suppose there

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might have been others but they would have required qualifications or the usual (bribery) which is something I’ve never done and never would. So I went off and learnt to fly at Wilson Airport.

Q: Oh, despite having flown all this time, you had to go learn again?

A: This is for a commercial licence, which is totally different. Private pilots’ licenses need 40 hours’ experience and basic handling of the airplane.

Commercial licenses require a minimum of 350 hours’ experience and some stiff exams on navigation, radio technology, engines, et cetera et cetera.

Anyway I took that and passed and I then joined a partner who was a farmer up in Mau Narok, Anthony Lutyens who had his own aircraft, and we formed a commercial charter operation from Mau Narok which was a 9,000ft altitude airfield, 100ft difference between one end and the other so one way it was uphill, the other downhill and our colleagues in the aviation world gave us about one month to survive because it is quite unusual to operate commercial aircraft at that altitude. But we

did it and we did it at night and we did it in all weathers and so on and so forth.

Q: Who were you flying since it was commercial? Who were you carrying?

A: All and sundry — anybody who needed our airplanes, which at that time were a six-seater single and an eight-seater twin. Both were financed by a loan from the bank, which in those days was a commercially viable proposition and the bank manager would take the trouble to come and look at your airplane and actually even do a flight. So, we operated from there and it was hugely challenging from the point of view that you’ve just asked, ‘where did you get your business’, because we were away from the city, we were away from most of the tour operators and so on.

Q: Was there already tourism at that time?

A: Tourism, especially by air, was in its heyday. Everybody flew. It was an East African Community free from Customs, immigration, et cetera, and with all East Africa’s attractions available.

But yes, it was a huge challenge and we built the business through personal

left, this airfield up at Mau Narok was on his farm so we lost that and we moved to Nakuru for a bit and then finally I had to capitulate and join the big boys in Nairobi.

Lord Enniskillen and his business partner Anthony Lutyens stand next to two Sunbird Charters aircraft at Mt. Kenya Safari Club in 1972, during the company’s heyday.

Q: How many planes by the time you came to Nairobi?

A: About 6.

Q: Six? A: Yes. I bought out smaller companies like we were. Other smaller companies, we brought them in and we worked together and we built it up.

Q: This is starting from one plane to how many over what period of time?

A: Our planes were 15 by 1976 and we started in 1969.

Q: So, in seven years, 15?

A: Yes, seven years, including DC3s and King Airs and those sort of airplanes.

Q: Were you doing scheduled flights or only chartered?

A: Scheduled and charter.

Q: Scheduled between where and where?

A: Mainly to Sudan. I operated a scheduled service for the southern regional government all over southern Sudan.

contacts, through doing everything we could to promote ourselves as being different and also, geographically, slightly more advantageous than Nairobi – more in the centre.

For instance, we were closer to the Mara than Nairobi and as the cost of charter flying is based on mileage, that gave us a certain advantage. It backfired once when one of the major opposing charter companies could not believe that I had charged the full cost of going down to Kilifi to collect some clients and fly them over to Murchison Falls. Why wouldn’t they have chosen a Mombasa-based company or a Nairobi-based company?

And I actually faced being closed down by the authorities because they thought I had broken the rules, but I was able to prove that they were completely wrong and the reason these people had chosen us was that they preferred us and were prepared to pay for us. So we developed our charter company.

My partner then – he was a farmer, but with a passion for flying, possibly even more passion than I, because, as I said, I absolutely love flying and it was a challenge to me but not purely as an exhilarating thing to do. So

he finally decided that he wants to leave. He went back to New Zealand, where his family originally came from, where he had inherited this small farm and he flew there in a little single-engine airplane.

Q: Over how many days?

A: I think six weeks or so. I saw him off from Embakasi because he couldn’t have taken off from Wilson. He was so overloaded with fuel and it’s quite a story in itself. Anyway, he got to New Zealand, so I bought him out; I bought the company and built it up from there.

Q: What did you call that company?

You haven’t told us so far.

A: When it started it was Sunbird Charters, then it became Sunbird Aviation, then it became Air Kenya.

Q: There’s still an Air Kenya.

A: Yes. Very successful and one or two of my original employees are still employed there.

Q: Is that so?

A: Yes. So I built it up into quite a substantial operation, but when my partner

Q: There was a regional government then?

A: Yes. Q: There was no war at the time?

A: Yes there was. There was trouble.

Q: You were taking your planes into a war zone then?

A: Yes, but legitimately.

Q: I meant the risk, I didn’t mean that it was not legitimate. Now, what did it take, in the ’70s, to move from one aeroplane in one corner of the country, which no one would visualize an air charter company being based at – where you and your friend started – to a 15-plane company, with scheduled flights and so on. What was involved in that process? Because, really, this in some way is a history of private aviation in Kenya. Where did you get your pilots from? Were there plenty of people around who could fly or did you have to invite people from the UK or elsewhere who could come in and fly, help with management, all those things?

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From P69

A: I think, on the positive side, we had a very enabling environment which we certainly don’t have today.

Q: Really?

A: The whole of East Africa was there, so Kenya wasn’t an orphan and was able to attract tourists to places like Uganda, Rwanda, that was all there and it took a minimal amount of paperwork to get permissions to go in and land.

It was probably better organized in that; one particular programme I will give as an example is a programme for Lindblad, which was one of the most up-market USbased tour operators.

Q: Do they still exist?

A: They exist in a different form, but one of their major assets was the Lindblad Explorer, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It was a ship that used to take tourists to the Antarctic.

Q: Yes. He himself was a Norwegian or something?

A: Yes, Swedish. Anyway, he was a remarkable man and he started what we called an East African Wing Safari. It was about a 1,400-mile circuit in one day.

Quite a long journey for the pilot, going through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and back; dropping ten, picking up ten, dropping ten, picking up ten. So the whole 1,400 miles was full so the price was affordable, the proceeds were profitable for us as the operators and it was a great success.

Q: Explain that a little more please.

Give an example and, say, something like, ”We picked up people in Mombasa, then flew here, then fly them there”, et cetera.

A: It would be from Nairobi to Murchison Falls.

Q: So you take ten people from Nairobi, fly them to Murchison Falls?

A: Yes. Q: You would leave them at Murchison Falls?

A: Pick up ten we’d left two days earlier at Murchison Falls, fly them to Seronera .

Q: Where is Seronera?

A: It is in northern Tanzania.

Q: Okay.

A: Pick up ten there that we had dropped two days before, take them to Cottar’s Camp on the Athi River. And so

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Assistant Minister for Transport Kamwithi Munyi and Enniskillen, then Lord Cole, CEO Kenya Airways.

on to Samburu, Mt. Kenya, all those places were on the circuit and because of his skills in marketing, every flight was usually full.

We bought a Britten-Norman Trislander which was a three-engine version of the Islander. It was built in the Isle of Wight.

We went to collect it and flew it out here from the Isle of Wight. It was the first in Africa.

Q: What were the special features in it?

A: It was built as an 18-seater but, there was no way that it could carry 18 passengers at this altitude, so we reconfigured it to 10 plus two crew.

Q: So you were actually growing enough to require some of the latest models of aeroplanes of that time for your company?

A: Yes. It was first in Africa, as I said, but very underpowered, very heavy and we operated it all day long every day to such an extent that it had to be maintained at night because there was no other time to maintain.

Q: So what you are saying is that demand was huge?

A: Huge for that particular programme.

It was completely sold on that programme.

We had other aircraft for other things.

Q: So, just from a business point of view, did you buy that plane because

you knew it would be sold, or did you buy it and then this came up?

A: No, we took a business risk.

Q: Oh? A: Absolutely. So, going back to the pluses, a very enabling environment physically and politically here, relative lack of bureaucracy and massive fees and documentation, which you now have to do, banks willing to lend at reasonable prices and reasonable terms, yes a supply of good young people who also got the flying bug and became available to hire.

Q: But there can’t have been very many indigenous Kenyan pilots . . .

A: Sadly not, not many. But still, we had plenty and a lot of them went on into airlines like Kenya Airways, some ended up in Cathay Pacific and other international airlines. So there was a supply, there were airfields everywhere, insurance was reasonable. Nowadays, sadly, I feel standards in many ways have slipped badly and, as a result, there are far more accidents than there should be, with the consequence that insurance becomes almost unaffordable. In those days it was affordable.

Weather of course is a conducive factor up to a point. The problem is that weather in East Africa is relatively unpredictable.

You can’t go and get a weather forecast which is accurate plus or minus ten miles

or ten minutes like you can in Europe, and you can get badly caught out and when you get caught out, you’ve got some very high ground to contend with, unlike other parts of the world. If you are caught, for instance, in the Nairobi area, you’ve got the Aberdares at 14,000ft, very close. Much closer at 7,500ft, Ngong.

So those were the conducive factors and I think obviously you had to be a real entrepreneur, a risk-taker. In today’s world when there are so many unbelievably poor people, mentioning any figure is probably a mistake, but in comparative terms in those days, I had no money, none at all, but I was able to persuade my bank managers and my partners and my clients that I was a reliable fellow and, I suppose, to some extent, I proved that by performance and so financing a fleet, purchasing a competitive organization was possible, but I committed myself for life, and, in some ways, put the rope around my neck, because I had to pay these loans off and I had to maintain my reputation.

Q: A rope could only be tightened if something went wrong. But, tell me, going back to the commercial aspects then, in this enabling environment there’s places to take your clients to, there’s financing available and so forth. What you are saying then is that it was in some ways easier to start a charter company from scratch then than it would be now?

A: I can’t really answer that with authority because I haven’t tried to start one now.

Q: But you are a pioneer back then?

A: My impression is, in many ways, it might even be easier today . . .

Q: That’s what I was going to tell you . . .

A: . . . because you can take shortcuts, sadly.

Q: It’s not just the shortcuts. The money is more easily available.

A: Money, yes.

Q: It’s actually much easier to borrow now than it would have been in your time and also there are more rich people looking for somewhere to invest than I imagine there were rich people in Kenya at that time. So, the only thing you had going for you really was the enabling environment. I don’t think getting the money was easier than it is now.

A: Possibly not. And another factor now, I think, is that many companies benefit

from the rich people who, naturally, for prestige and for convenience and for good commercial reasons, want executive jets and that sort of thing and they can’t fully justify them, so they place them with a charter company to use. That wasn’t really available to us in those days. But an interesting side to that question I think is that the regulation, although less overwhelming in those days, was much stricter.

Q: You couldn’t take shortcuts?

A: You couldn’t take shortcuts.

Sometimes you really wonder nowadays how that person got a license, how that person got away. For instance, that Western Kenya accident.

Q: What do you mean?

A: To get our license to operate from Mau Narok involved me going to Arusha to appear before the Civil Aviation Board many times, arguing my case against huge objections from the established few in Nairobi.

It is fascinating to me that the Chairman of the Civil Aviation Board at that time was Kenneth Matiba, and, more importantly, the Secretary, who really advises the chairman and does all the paperwork, was Richard Nyaga, who followed me as the Chief Executive of Kenya Airways, and we’ve remained good friends.

Iwas basically a farmer, and I went to Arusha to say ‘Please, may I have a license?’

And everybody was standing up ‘How can you give these people who’ve got no experience, they are operating from 9,000ft, which is dangerous, how can you give them a license?’

Q: It shouldn’t have been licensed in the first place.

A: Which reminds me, I think another major difference between those days and now in terms of getting a licence, it’s hard to imagine today that in those days we had a map, a ruler, a compass, and we navigated by our wits. I flew from Nairobi non-stop to the Seychelles on pure navigation.

We didn’t have Global Positioning Systems (GPS) or other aids to navigation that we have today. I’m not saying flying is easier today, but it’s very different.

In those days, you concentrated every inch of the way. Now a lot of the need to concentrate is taken by the machinery, whether it’s the autopilot or GPS or whatever. And if you remember that incident when a jetliner strayed over Russian territory . . .

Q: So there were vested interests even within aviation and as an outsider you had to fight your way in?

A: Yes. Anyway, we fought and we won.

We got our license and went on from there.

So, those were the positives. You’ve touched on some of them, if you like, they are not so easy. That’s what I would say about them.

Scheduled service in those days, I think, was more difficult to obtain, or perhaps I just took it more seriously than today. You could not get a scheduled service licence unless you guaranteed to operate on the published date and time.

Whether you had a passenger or not, you still had to operate. Now, we turn up for scheduled service and they say ‘sorry, for some technical reason, you have to wait till tomorrow’. We couldn’t have got away with that. We would have lost our licence.

So we had to operate sometimes on almost nil revenue and then we had to make up for the loss.

Q: So, let me get this right, the regulatory structures under the East African Community were stricter but also fairer. What do you say?

A: Simpler but stricter. Fairer in that they applied equally to all pretty much.

Q: That was inexcusable.

A: That company would have been closed down.

You couldn’t take shortcuts.

Sometimes you really wonder nowadays how that person got a license, how that person got away.

For instance, that Western Kenya accident ”

Q: The one which got shot down?

A: The one shot down. It just seems as though the pilot wasn’t concentrating. How could he have got to that position?

Q: Yes he wasn’t.

A: Because he had all aids possible to tell him where he was.

Q: What about the other one, the Polish one where the entire Cabinet was wiped out when they flew into a mountainside?

A: Yes, now that again I think is another substantial change from those days to these.

In those days, everything depended on reputation, on avoiding accident, on paying off your bank loan and so on, otherwise you are finished.

Now, today, I believe an enormous number of accidents are caused by bad management. Initially, of course, the poor pilot is always blamed and indeed if a pilot flies into a mountain, it’s only him to blame, so to speak.

But sometimes the reason he flies into the mountain is because he may be under enormous psychological pressure to get back on time. I believe several accidents recently may have been because the pilot Turn to P72

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about how planes used to land in Lake Naivasha. That was before your time?

A: Not entirely, but I never actually landed in the lake. My wife did. Naivasha was a seaplane stopover.

A delegation led by the Chairman and CEO of Kenya Airways hands over the development strategy report to President Daniel arap Moi at State House, Nakuru, in the 1980s. Starting from far right in the front row is Jeremiah Kierieni, Head of the Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet; next Knut Hammarskjöld, Director-General of IATA; Moi; Mordechai Ben Ari (holding the report); Power and Communications Minister Henry Kosgey; Simon Mbugua, PS Power and Communications; back row from left Ola Sorsberg (IATA); Eliud Mathu (Chairman Kenya Airways); Andrew Enniskillen CEO. From P71

was under an unbearable pressure to be on time.

So, going back to the comparisons then and now, I think that the technical side is important and I’m not saying that it was more difficult in those days; I’m simply saying that it was such a different environment.

Q: Would you say different skills were called for and different attitudes towards work?

A: Yes, I think probably. Certainly, today, you need to be more of a computer operator, engineer, really knowledgeable in electronics. In my day, electronics was a pretty small part of the whole thing and everything was navigation, traditional navigation and basic radio aids.

Q: Now, you mentioned a trip to the Seychelles. What’s the furthest you ever flew personally from your base here in Kenya?

A: Non-stop?

Q: Not non-stop. Even if you stopped several times.

A: Copenhagen, I suppose. Copenhagen and Enniskillen.

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Q: You actually landed in your ancestral home? How big a plane was that?

A: Four seats, single.

Q: How many stops would you have to do from Kenya all the way to Enniskillen?

A: There was Asmara, Port Sudan, Cairo, Nice, Gatwick, Enniskillen.

Q: That was just you and your family?

Of course it must have been if you were going to Enniskillen.

A: Myself and my wife. Just the two of us. And lots happened on the trip and lots happened on many trips. I mean, we flew the Trislander right from the Isle of Wight and I think that’s the longest non-stop flight.

Q: The Trislander came to Kenya nonstop?

A: No, but we flew non-stop from Port Sudan to Nairobi. But the Trislander is quite a slow aeroplane. Although the distance Port Sudan-Nairobi is less than Seychelles -Nairobi. Seychelles-Nairobi took me six hours, Port Sudan-Nairobi took me ten -and-a-half.

Q: Okay. Just so that I understand, you know we always hear these stories

Q: Okay. So those were the early days.

Now going by this, we now come to the point where you have Sunbird Aviation, which has turned eventually into Air Kenya. At some point you sold it?

A: Yes. I sold it in, I suppose, about 1976, because I had a heart condition diagnosed, which meant that I lost my commercial license. I’ve never lost a private license, I still have my private license, but I lost my commercial license and I felt that if I couldn’t do what I was asking my pilots to do, I would be a less good manager and I just didn’t want to do that. So I decided to sell it, but I retained shares and I retained the directorship for some time and I finally parted with it in 1979, when I was appointed to Kenya Airways because it was a condition; conflict of interest.

Q: But a Chief Executive of a company with 15 aeroplanes, when do you find the time to fly? I would have thought you mostly sat in an office?

A: No, I did a lot of office work while I was flying. I did as much flying, possibly more than any pilot and every time we brought in a new type or a new aeroplane, I would do the initial flying to check it out and to get rid of any problems. I was a hands-on manager: loading myself, everything.

So that answers your question on length of flight . . . right down to Cape Town, Copenhagen. I’ve flown in America, but I’ve never flown to America on a commercial license.

Q: You mean your commercial licence here was valid even in the US? A: Yes, I went to America to take an airline transport licence. The progression was from student licence to pilot’s licence if you pass the test and from there you have to get your 350 hours’ experience to get a commercial licence which entitles you to fly relatively small aeroplanes only.

In order to fly bigger ones, you have to have an airline transport licence, which I obtained in America. So, at one stage, I had an American and East African airline transport licence.

Q: Have you any idea at all how many hours you must have spent in the air over the years? I’m sure the 300 passed in the 70s. So how many hours would you say?

A: The trouble is hours are pretty meaningless. I always feel the number of flights is more significant. I haven’t logged quite a lot of the hours I’ve done. But actually logged about 10,000. Actually flown, probably closer to 15,000 or 20,000.

look for the gorillas.In those days you had to climb the mountains and find them; they were completely wild.

Q: You are suggesting they are not wild now?

A: They are, but they are easier to find because they are being watched all the time. Then they were completely out in the wild, up in the hills behind Bukavu.

So I finally got my landing permission for Bukavu, arrived there and the authorities immediately arrested me because I didn’t have take-off permission.

You would have thought that landing permission implied that you may go, but apparently it meant you are welcome to come but you may not leave. Permission to leave had to be obtained from Kinshasa 1,500 miles away, and very poor communications. It took about a week. So, for that week I was under house arrest.

Q: That’s a lot of time in the air.

A: It’s a lot of time in the air. I haven’t actually worked out how many miles or times round the globe it is, but . . . close to 3 million miles. The problem of course is, again, if you are logging hours, you can log hours at 60 miles an hour and go nowhere or you can log hours at 500 miles an hour and you’ve covered the world.

Q: It all depends on your speed.

A: It depends on the speed of the aeroplane you are flying.

Q: Are there any unusual adventures you can recall from the time, which might give our readers some idea of what it was like being a leading charter pilot in those days?

A: The ones I could think of immediately were being under house arrest in Somalia for six weeks. I had been flying for an American mining company who were prospecting for uranium and it was very low-level flying with a Geiger counter at tree-top height. We had Somali military pilots with us who were to watch what we were doing and the government of Siad Barre felt that we were spying for the American Government. So I was lucky not to be locked up in a prison, but I was put under house arrest. It took six weeks to get me out. That was one incident.

Q: Roughly what year approximately?

A: Early seventies. Those are the sort of things that are in my pilot’s log book.

Another incident was that in those days it took forever to get permission to fly to some foreign countries and I had a trip planned to go into what is now the DRC to

BELOW: A Sunbird plane and its pilot alongside Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner’s private jet, the Big Bunny, a DC9, at the Embakasi Airport, in the 1970s. Lord Enniskillen flew Hefner and a bevy of his bunnies to the Masai Mara on safari, including the Barbie Benton who Hefner later married and then divorced.

Q: Again?

A: Yes. Q: That was when Mobutu was in charge?

A: Yes, I guess. Another incident was, you remember when Green Monkey disease broke out in Sudan, which I believe may have been a fore-runner of HIV/AIDS? I have a feeling that the human race got these viruses from the monkey population because they were very close; they were living together, they were eating monkeys and so on.

And Green Monkey at that time was a real scare because there didn’t appear to be any cure for it and it was certain quick death. There was some problem, I can’t really remember what it was, but, officially, Kenya didn’t want anything to do with bringing human and monkey body parts in for analysis. They had to get out to Porton Down, which is the laboratory in England which does these sort of things.

So I was “illegally” but with unofficial approval of the then PS Health, bringing these body parts out of the Sudan and then giving them to captains of airlines that were flying to England and they would take the samples to Porton. As a result of that, the PS wanted to put me in Port Reitz Quarantine Hospital in case I had caught green Monkey disease. But he conceded and I was detained at home.

Q: And were there symptoms, were you feeling feverish or anything like that?

A: Not at all. But I was flying a WHO [World Health Organization] team around and one of the team members started to sneeze in the airplane.There was panic and I was told to land immediately and evacuate the airplane.

In another incident, I ran out of fuel. I had borrowed a friend’s airplane and we went to Lake Turkana for a fishing trip. I had masses of fuel when I took off. I had enough fuel to go to Turkana and back and down to Mombasa.

So on the return, I looked into the tank, I didn’t have a dip stick. The fuel gauges were reading a little low but they were often inaccurate.

They were reading empty by the time we got to Nakuru, but there was no fuel in Nakuru. So I kept going and we ran out of fuel over the Limuru escarpment and I had to do a forced landing. And, you know, when you are in serious trouble in the air, you call ‘Mayday’.

So I gave the Mayday to Wilson Airport and obviously one of the controllers knew who I was and he tipped off the press, the police, the firefighters and you wouldn’t believe the fuss that thousands of people came out. It subsequently transpired that due to a technical fault, fuel was being sucked out of the tanks in flight.

Q: Where did you land?

A: On the new top road to Nakuru that was under construction.

Q: There were no cars on the road, or they stopped them?

A: No cars, but plenty of construction vehicles, power lines and telephone lines.

And then the next day there was a cartoon in the press showing a pilot in shorts, because I had come straight from fishing, trying to get some fuel and someone else saying ‘you are better off in a Nissan.

Q: But no one was hurt?

A: No. I had on board a former professional hunter and I said to him ‘get Turn to P74

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From P73

into the back and strap in’ and he said ‘no way, this is more exciting than hunting buffalo any day’.

Q: So this was in the seventies?

A: No, it must have been in the eighties because I had just left Kenya Airways. I would guess it was about 1982.

Q: So he may have been a professional hunter but he can’t have been hunting because hunting had been banned by the Government.

A: Yes, but hunting is still going on in neighbouring countries.

Q: Yes it is. Was that the only time you landed an aeroplane on a road?

A: No, I can think of at least one more.

Whilst Isaac Omolo Okero was Minister of Power and Communications, he asked me to fly him to Gem, so that he could visit his constituency and home.

When I remarked that there was no airfield as far as I knew anywhere near Gem, he said, ‘What’s wrong with the road?’ I pointed out that one required special permission for that sort of thing and his response was, ‘I hereby give you permission!’

We had a very successful visit and were greeted by thousands upon arrival!

Q: So there was much more to flying back then, than just the routine charter or scheduled flight?

A: I suppose so. Those were the sort of things that happened. Another incident was when I was called to rescue a mechanic working up in Southern Sudan at Yei. He was doing some welding and a piece of metal exploded and went into his brain and he was on the point of death and it proved impossible to get permission to go in to get him, so I had to go in without permission and it involved James Bond stuff, telling the authorities where I was whereas in fact I was somewhere different. We were not allowed to overfly Uganda, but I did. I got him to hospital and his life was saved.

Q: Roughly what year was this?

A: That would be in the early seventies.

Q: Was there ever a possibility a military aircraft would have come out and shot you down?

A: Very much so. Uganda had surfaceto-air missiles up in the northern part and we had to go round Uganda, but in order to get to him quickly, I did overfly, I took a chance.

74 |

Q: That’s a great story. I’m glad you remembered it.

A: That just gives a sort of impression of the way life was in those days. Now it is easier to get medical emergency clearances.

The guy who was my co-conspirator with the Green Monkey business was Wilfred Koinange, do you remember him?

Q: Yes. The former PS, Health?

A: That’s right. We were working together on this stuff to go out to Porton, but, basically, it was against WHO regulations and it was against Kenya’s bilateral agreements. I went to him and the minister and said, ‘Look, I’m witnessing people coming down from Sudan, no quarantine, no nothing and yet this disease is spreading south, it’s threatening Kenya.

What are you going to do about it?’

And then we got going on this programme and I like to think it helped prevent the Green Monkey disease coming to Kenya.

Q: Anything else, at all, that might count as being part of the history of aviation in those days?

A: In the mid-seventies one of Sunbird’s aircraft – a Piper Aztec 5Y-ACS was leased out to Bruce McKenzie and Keith Savage to fly to Uganda to meet Idi Amin Dada.

What their business was I am not sure, but could guess!

On their departure from Entebbe back to Nairobi they were given a gift by Amin – a stuffed lion’s head! You probably know the rest of the story – the bomb inside the lion’s head designed to detonate over Lake Victoria delayed and aircraft, pilot and the two passengers were blown to bits over the Ngong Hills. Apparently the bomb had detonated later than intended – the aircraft was meant to fall into the Lake without trace.

Q: I remember that very well. It made global headlines. Most tragic of course.

So back to your story then?

A: Yes. So, I went into Credit Finance

The bomb inside the lion’s head designed to detonate over Lake Victoria delayed and aircraft, pilot and the two passengers were blown to bits over the Ngong Hills”

Corporation as it was then, now CFCStanbic bank, as Chief Executive for a short time and, while I was there, I got a call from Mr. Okero, who was then Minister of Power.

Q: Transport and Communications or Power?

A: Power and Communications. So I got a call from the Minister, saying ‘can you spare me a few minutes?’ and I thought he wanted a loan, because I was in that business and I’d already turned down a rather prominent Cabinet member.

So I said, ‘Yes, certainly, sir. Do you want to come to my office or should I come to yours?’ And he said, ‘Probably better you come to mine if that’s alright’.

This was at 4 O’clock on a Friday afternoon. So I went to his office and he said in his usual very brief and to-the-point way, ‘How would you react if I said I’d like to appoint you Chief Executive of Kenya Airways?’

I was actually stunned and I think my first question was ‘When do you want an answer?’ and he said Monday morning.

So I had to get back and think and told my employer, who was CFC, there’s a possibility that I might join Kenya Airways.

I didn’t know what my terms would be or anything, but I was young enough and naïve enough to think that surely this is an opportunity that would never come again and which I must take, although I had seriously doubted my ability. I was only 38.

Q: Are you saying that you were only 38 by the time you had finished with Air Kenya and all this?

A: Yes. Q: So, the heart condition was diagnosed when you were that young?

A: It was diagnosed in 1976 at which point I was 34. By the way, Air Kenya, it became Air Kenya long after I had sold it.

It was Sunbird Aviation and the people who bought it from me then sold it on and it became Air Kenya. But it retained the original Sunbird logo and it still has it today.

So, he said, ‘I’ll give you the weekend’.

He didn’t indicate what a problem it was going to be, but I did say yes. And then he had to convince the President, the Minister of Finance and the Attorney General, principally.

And of course I didn’t know the inside story, but I believe the Minister of Finance, who is today’s President, was the most difficult to convince and it took quite a while.

At that time I had to negotiate with the Attorney General’s Chambers for my terms.

candidate to be the Secretary General.

Anyway, it was turned down flat and so I had to deal with the bank, which was on my neck because we had no money, I had to go and beg for the salaries every month, I had to deal with the politics, I had to deal with the unions, foreign governments over traffic rights, I had to deal with the operational side and I was still 38-years-old with a Board of what I considered grumpy old wazee to deal with. So it was a difficult time.

I was to be a government employee but my terms had to be in line with the commercial world because I had children at school and I believe the terms that were finally negotiated made me one of the most highly paid people in the Kenyan Government, which is not something to be proud of, by the way.

Q: But it was a legitimate salary?

A: But it was for that reason of course that it was very difficult to persuade the politicians, because they had to know and also I was a young man. But the honour was to be the first Kenyan national to be appointed to head Kenya Airways.

Q: Who was there before you?

A: I took over from Donal Downing, who was an Aerlingus appointee. Anyway, they finally convinced the Big Three and I was appointed and I took over my duties in May 1979, or thereabouts. But, tragically for me and for possibly the airline in that respect, the Minister of Power lost power.

Q: Voted out?

A: Voted out at the elections. So my mentor, if you like, had gone and I inherited in his place Mr. Henry Kosgey, straight from the laboratories of the East African Breweries. And basically from then on, I had minimal political support and again the threads began to tie together because, by this time, Richard Nyaga, who was the Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Transport and directly responsible for aviation matters, so I had a lot of dealings with him, although, of course, hierarchically speaking, I dealt with the Permanent Secretary.

And fairly early on in my time at Kenya Airways, I felt that this job was actually too big for one man because it was a fledgling airline operating long routes with shortrange aeroplanes, trying to capture the high revenue clientele in domestic-configured Boeing 707s and dealing with three different militant unions and I thought this was a fulltime job for a Chief Executive and that he didn’t therefore have time for the necessary networking and politicking that had to be done not with the Kenyan Government alone, but with world governments.

So I begged to be allowed to recruit Richard Nyaga as my co-Managing Director, not working for me but working with me on the same platform so that he could deal with those matters that he was so incredibly good at, as was shown in his career path because he became the Deputy to the Secretary General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and in fact a

Q: Would you go as far as to say it was a nightmare compared to the relatively straightforward way in which you had built your own airline?

A: No, I would say it was an experience I’m hugely grateful to have had, with hindsight.

All I was given was a set of Board papers from recent Board meetings, and a balance sheet which was horrible, but I probably didn’t have the experience at that time to realize how

”

horrible

Q: With all that stress?

A: Yes, with all that stress. I mean it was huge stress in running your own large airline with the responsibilities and so on, but, from my own point of view, from the experience point of view, I’m hugely grateful.

Of course I will remain forever honoured to have been selected and it gave me an opportunity to see a different side of aviation which I would never have experienced, like travelling to Hong Kong for the launch of a new route with the chairman, Eliud Mathu, in those days.

But it was difficult to do the sort of hands-on management that I was used to at the same time. And I inherited a team. I inherited about 4,000 workers altogether and one of my briefs given to me by the minister was ‘get this workforce cut down and get the airline profitable’.

Well in the face of political intervention from every side, in the face of three militant unions and so on, it wasn’t that easy just to get rid of people. But we did get it down to nearly 1,800 by the time I left.

Q: From 4,000 to 1,800? That’s a huge difference.

A: After I left, it built back up. But then it became legitimate to do so because it was now a much bigger airline with more routes, more aircraft and so on.

Q: Apart from reducing staff, what were the other – of course that was one specific brief you were given which you carried it out – what were the other briefs to make it more profitable, to make it bigger, meaning you took the job when you were told ‘this is what we are hoping you will do’. How many of those things were possible, how many proved impossible?

A: From my recollection, compared to today’s world when we don’t buy a company without doing due diligence and looking into everything, from my recollection, all I was given was a set of Board papers from recent Board meetings, and a balance sheet which was horrible, but I probably didn’t have the experience at that time to realize how horrible, and a sort of naïve expectation that the Government would support me; government including the bank, which was the Kenya Commercial Bank in those days.

John Michuki and Philip Ndegwa were the Chairs that I had to deal with.

And from the bank’s point of view, we were a total disaster. We were making losses every month, we had no assets, the balance sheet was appalling, but either the Government had to make the decision to close the airline or we had to be kept going somehow.

And I personally, as I said, feel that I didn’t enjoy the political support that I naively expected. For instance, I would do my duty every time the President left or came back to the country and I’d be in the line at the airport and he would walk down and shake hands and talk to others but would just walk on past me.

Q: That was Moi? A: Yes. Probably not on purpose, probably sub-conscious. But it was quite obvious to those surrounding me that I didn’t enjoy too much political support.

So, forgive me, what was the core of your question?

Q: The core of my question was one – it was overstaffed, you managed to reduce the staff. What was the second problem?

A: It was vastly underfunded, so we relied on an overdraft, it was totally illequipped, we were flying to London on a vapour . . . because the range of those aircraft that we inherited was basically regional, not really long-range and had bad galley and toilet facilities for those long-haul journeys.

And so we just simply couldn’t compete with the other established airlines. So we were tending to be de facto a package tour operator rather than, as today, a business airline with lots of business traffic.

Package tours, of course they pay very little, based on the assumption that your aeroplane is going to be filled with lots in the back seats paying little, a few in the middle seats paying more and a few upfront seats paying a fortune. That mix didn’t Turn to P76

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ANDREW, LORD ENNISKILLEN

From P75

happen in my day. So those were some of the difficulties. Also the huge interference from politicians; we’d have incidents of cabin crew behaving absolutely outrageously in public in uniform and they would be fired.

And I’d get a call from a minister that very night, ‘reinstate my daughter’, which I, of course, refused to do. One of the incidents that I suffered was political. I had a licensed firearm, which I used to carry and one day I went to meet my wife who was coming in from London and rather than leave the firearm in my office, I had it in my briefcase with me but I never went anywhere near going through Customs.

I was waiting for her outside and for some reason which I subsequently feel was due to the fact that Paul Ngei and one or two other bigwigs were in the crowd, the Customs officer saw me standing there and demanded that I open my briefcase. I said, ‘since I’m not going through to airside, why do you want to look into my briefcase? I’m waiting for my wife’.

He insisted and I said, ‘Okay, happy to do so, but I have a gun with me, licensed and I really don’t want to produce my gun in public. I’m the Chief Executive Kenya Airways, so can we go into an office and you can look at my briefcase there?’ He said, ‘No, open it here now’. And he pulled out my revolver, held it up for all to see and Paul Ngei was one of those who saw it.

And if you look at the news clips of those early days, when Njonjo was impeached in Parliament, Paul Ngei stood up in Parliament and said Andrew Cole imports arms for Mr. Njonjo. And because he had immunity of Parliament, I couldn’t sue him.

Q: Of course you were set up, someone set that man to come and do that. There was no way that was an accident.

A: Anyway, I then got very embroiled in the Njonjo case as reported in The Weekly Review.

Q: Which was then published by Hilary Ng’weno?

A: Hilary Ng’weno. He tried to make out that I was Mr. Njonjo’s Mr. Fix-it.

Q: Hit-man or armourer?

A: No, much more than that. That I was a partner with him in Solio because he had bought Solio from my father, but I had nothing to do with it. In fact, if it had been me, I would have said to my father, don’t sell. There was a huge airfield on Solio built by the new owner Parfett.

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Joshua arap Sang Enniskillen’s first aeroplane, a Piper Pacer, in 1963.

Q: Parfett owned it before your father or?

A: No, bought it from my father.

Q: Okay. But Njonjo and Parfett bought it together?

A: I think Njonjo remained a partner.

So, then Sunbird was accused of taking mercenaries into the Seychelles to stage that coup, which indeed we did, but we didn’t know it.

Q: You didn’t know who they were?

A: They registered as a rugby team.

Q: So, would you say, looking at the incidental details, someone may have mistakenly thought you had these things or do you think they knew that Sunbird had no part in it but were determined to make the case?

A: But there were other coincidences — CFC, that was Mr. Njonjo’s bank. Because he got involved with CFC. He bought into CFC by the time I left. Hilary Ng’weno did an exemplary job of investigative journalism, but coming in every case to the wrong conclusion.

And I actually had to appeal to the President to get this stopped somehow, because it was affecting my reputation as the Chairman of the Mount Kenya Safari Clubs, as I was by then, and also as the former Chief Executive of Kenya Airways. I could imagine the Government might be embarrassed having retained me, given the scandal. I felt my phone was being tapped, everywhere I was being followed because Hilary Ng’weno was making the case that I was the man behind Njonjo.

Q: You see, to the average Kenyan reader, someone like you would seem very mysterious. White Kenyan who is a Lord and goes to the House of Lords and yet runs Kenya Airways and runs a bank. It can easily be cooked up to seem as something very, very mysterious and suggest you are not an ordinary person at all; you are one of these mysterious people who pull strings behind the scenes. How much longer did you get to stay then?

A: I stayed for about three years.

Q: Three years? How many years after the Njonjo trouble started? His problems I believe were in 1983.

A: No I had left by then. I left in 1982.

But the incident that caused Paul Ngei to mention me in Parliament was the one that he saw when I was in Kenya Airways.

So, I left and went back to Sunbird Aviation for a short time as chairman and then I went and joined Intercontinental Hotels and we built the Nairobi Safari Club to add to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, which was already in place.

Q: Tell us a little more about this incident at the airport. This is bound to surprise many readers. The insistence that the gun had to be taken out of your briefcase; waving it around in the air in a fairly public place and so on. Looking back, what would you say that was about? Was it about branding you as a dangerous man? Was there an agenda focused on just you or was it your friend Charles Njonjo they

were after? Why was all that drama deliberately created?

A: Well, I must say I never thought of it as such. I always thought of it as the officials being particularly diligent about their duties because they were in the presence of bigwigs watching them.

But yes, with hindsight, I suppose there’s a way people connected me with Njonjo.

I was being watched all the time. Maybe Paul Ngei was after me for turning down his request for a loan when I was in CFC? I couldn’t really tell you. But my impression until recently was just an officious Customs officer who was being watched by big politicians and therefore felt that he must show that this mzungu wasn’t beyond the law.

Q: You really don’t think so? The airport was a smaller place then.

There’s no way he could not have known who you were.

A: Maybe. You are a wiser bird than I am.

Q: No. I wouldn’t say that I am. But we can leave that at that. Then you gave the impression that there was a media campaign thereafter . . .

A: The Weekly Review specifically.

Q: What do you make of that, looking back?

A: Well, looking back, first of all I knew Hilary Ngweno, I respected him and The Weekly Review was a good publication and much of the link with Njonjo was theoretically correct.

To give a couple of examples: I ran CFC and, as I left, Mr. Njonjo and others bought CFC, so the link between me and CFC was correct.

Solio: I was raised for the first few years in Solio before my parents split up. It belonged to my father, so you could say it was a family property, and it was bought by Mr. Njonjo and Mr. Parfett. Sunbird: the fact that we flew Mike Hoare and his crew into the Seychelles was in fact true.

So, in a way, I thought it was a remarkable piece of investigative journalism which just went on and on and on. I was on the cover page of The Weekly Review and you can’t stop a journalist. I appealed to him, people acting on my behalf appealed to him, but it went on, and so, finally, I had to appeal to the President. It was the most uncomfortable period. I was actually once stopped from leaving the country.

Q: Can’t have been pleasant at all. But eventually you were allowed to go?

A: I was going to London with my family

and the immigration officer who took my passport, looked down at his secret list and said, ‘I’m sorry, you are not allowed to travel’.

the average woman still has seven children. Kenya, we are down to four.

A: We are progressing.

Q: Well, at some point all this drama did end. What did you do then?

A: Then I decided to buy my farm on Lake Naivasha, Mundui, and go out on my own, but realizing that I had to keep a job in Nairobi to pay for it because it was too small; 1,200 acres as a cattle ranch and as a wildlife conservancy, it was too small really. So we had to go into the paying guest business, which was quite successful for quite a long time and I also had to get employment in Nairobi to help. I was with AAR Health Services for 15 years, commuting daily to Nairobi by air. I put all my salary back into Mundui, where we lived for 30 years.

Q: That’s progress, exactly.

A: And the key to the solution is things like education, health, water, which are longer-term things.

Q: Very happy years I should think.

Beautiful place.

A: Very happy. Wonderful. Absolutely unique.

Q: Surely, you miss not being at Mundui.

A: You’ll never know.

Q: Do you think you made the right choice in deciding to sell it?

A: The place was becoming an island.

Mundui itself was an absolutely world class paradise, but what was going on around it was not nice and I couldn’t do anything. I tried; for 20 years I was the chairman of the Riparian Association. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn’t 20 wasted years.

Q: There are certain things which only change when government policy changes and government policy unfortunately tends to be determined by the vote, which means it tends to be determined by population and in Kenya population means mostly the interests of the poor. Not in any fundamental way, but anything which calls for leaving large spaces open usually flies in the face of government policy.

A: But also, we’ve just got to learn that if we go on building on wetlands and building in swamps we are going to lose more and more people from disasters. Look at Bangkok. We just don’t seem to learn, and one of the things we don’t seem to have learnt is how to have a sustainable human population.

Q: That’s very far from being done, but the only positive sign I could give you is I was shocked the other day when I was checking on some site. Uganda,

But Hilary Ng’weno did an exemplary job of investigative journalism, but coming in every case to the wrong conclusion”

Q: I want to pull you back to Lake Naivasha. First, what were your hopes for the Riparian Association, then what were your successes and finally what were the frustrations which made you resign, because you did resign?

A: Yes. I did resign, but I like to think of it more as handing over. My hopes were to conserve the riparian land in its nearnatural status, because I have a passion as an environmentalist and I passionately felt that some areas of our country should be left pristine for future generations, Lake Naivasha was unique and, being a major body of freshwater should be conserved.

There’s a big difference between preservation and conservation. Preservation means hands off, conservation means manage, use but use wisely for the longterm future. And what was beginning to happen was that encroachment into the riparian land was going unchecked Buildings were going up, unlimited herds of cattle and sheep and goats were going down to the water to drink instead of the water being brought to them and so forth. And there was no management.

The Naivasha Council in Chotara’s day, he planted trees and good luck to him and he did many good things, but I don’t think you can say that when he was there, there was a focus on conserving this unique body of water, Lake Naivasha.

Q: I don’t think it was within his range to understand the need to conserve.

That was one of Moi’s problems. There are people he found politically useful who had no idea of public policy whatsoever.

A: Right. So, I and a couple of others, and I emphasize a couple of others because we were not many, saw that unless we do something to help ourselves, we can’t expect the Government to do it and we will lose this gem. So, we turned the Lake Naivasha Riparian Owners’ Association as it was called then from a merely statutory body that had a certain agreement with government to keep off the riparian land and whose only function really was adjudicating between land disputes, Turn to P78

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From P77

we turned it into a more pro-active conservation organization focusing on ways and means to keep the water fresh, the riparian land as a kidney for that water because, without it, it just becomes a recipient of everything that runs off, et cetera, et cetera, and I think I was appointed chairman in about 1986 and, by 1999, we had built this organization up to world recognition standards.

We won the Ramsar Award in 1999 for our efforts and my understanding why we received the award was that it was considered as an exemplary example of what a community can achieve to conserve the natural environment and it was a model which others copied. I remember I gave the keynote speech to the Ramsar Convention in Costa Rica, which was one of the highlights of my life. Most challenging, effectively like addressing the United Nations.

Q: It is. From an environmental position, definitely it was exactly that.

A: At that conference, several nations represented came up and said, ‘can we have copies of your management plan?’ or ‘we have already got copies of your management plan and we are putting it in place’ — Vietnam, for instance.

So it was a great success but, unfortunately, the flower industry had by then become so big, so powerful, such an employer of people and created so many problems indirectly, which, of course, they were not willing to acknowledge and yet were not willing to fund our organization.

And, probably, I and my committee were guilty of not going about fundraising in the right way. We had very limited funds and support, once the success had been achieved, implementation of the plan just evaporated. I always knew that was going to be the most difficult part.

People who had supported the plan in principle to say ‘yes we will respect the riparian land, we will not build on it, we will not plant flowers on it’, were now saying ‘why should we keep off the riparian land, the lake is three kilometers away. We are wasting time’.

They started building and putting up greenhouses and pit latrines and all that.

And we started to exercise our muscle in a purely voluntary way. The implementation committee, I think it’s important to emphasize, was not just a few of us locals. It was with official representation from many government ministries.

The committee was about 15, of which virtually half were government. And we worked extremely well as a team, trying to do things on a voluntary basis. Trying to get

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Maasai Mara - passengers boarding Wings Safaris

people to voluntarily pull back rather than going in with a gun and saying ‘you get out or you go to jail’.

But it didn’t work. They weren’t currently willing to consider these appeals for voluntary action so our focus then had to be to get the management plan made official so that we had some teeth. It finally happened when Mr. Musyoka, the current Vice President, was then the minister and he got it gazetted and the management team, of which I was the elected chair, was gazetted as official.

Within about three weeks of that happening, a few disgruntled characters went rushing to court under a certificate of urgency to restrain the minister from implementing this plan.

Q: The Kenyan Judiciary back then wasn’t what we hope it will be under the new Chief Justice. You could get an injunction for anything, absolutely anything.

A: What amazed me was the Government, with all its might, apparently was unable to bring this case forward. My expectation and my plea to minister after minister after minister, to the Attorney General, Solicitor General, was ‘let us hear and determine this case’, because I knew they had no case and all I needed was to take it to court and have it heard. To this day it hasn’t been heard.

Q: So, the restraining order is still in force?

A: The Government has found a way around. The original committee has been . . . I wouldn’t say it has been disbanded, because I think you have to de-gazette if you were gazetted, you have to be degazetted. We’ve never been de-gazetted but a new committee has been formed. It’s now called the Imarisha Naivasha Board under the initiative of the Prime Minister,

because nobody else seemed to be doing anything so he took it over.

Q: Having spent so much of your life, a surprisingly large number of hours up in the air, looking down at the country, seeing the changes, population patterns, the deforestation, is this fired your passion for the environment?

A: I think the answer to that is no.

Q: Even if you had never flown at all, you would still be interested?

A: Absolutely. However, for sure, seeing it from the air gives you a different perspective, especially because most of my flying has been at low level, not up in the stratosphere like an airline pilot.

But the point is that I was brought up on large acreages. I was brought up in a family that valued its land and looked after it for future generations, didn’t exploit it, and I was brought up as a Christian. I walked to church every Sunday even in the snow. But, truth be told, and with the risk of offending fellow Christians, I think my religion is really the natural world.

Q: Let me understand that because it might be clear to you, it might not be clear to the reader. First you are saying, given the upbringing, if you never flew at all, you’d still have a strong . . .

A: I’d still have a strong feeling for the land, trees, the animals, the birds and water.

Q: And, in that context then, given the population pressures that a country like Kenya has had, doesn’t that by itself limit the Government’s options on environmental issues?

A: I think yes for sure, but it probably also creates a greater responsibility on all of us to conserve and preserve a little of the natural world because it is part of our heritage and, more importantly, it’s one of

the pillars of our future and Vision 2030.

Economic development; tourism.

We are not going to bring tourists in this country if they simply sit on the beach and behind the beach, rather like Spain it’s just row-on-row of concrete buildings.

They are not going to come here if the only wildlife they can see is on a private farm and no access allowed. We have to conserve our natural world in Kenya and worldwide.

That’s the way I see it.

Q: If you could influence the Kenyan Government policy on just one issue, what would you give your focus to?

A: I’m on record as saying, ‘prioritize the environment; give it a bigger consideration in the Budget’. If you read Vision 2030, there’s hardly a mention of the natural environment, yet without the environment, manufacturing isn’t going to be possible because there is no water. Agriculture is not going to be possible because there is no sustainable land. How are we going to get it done?

Q: So you are saying considerations of the environment should be the priority and indeed the foundation of all economic planning?

A: Yes. And this is how the primitive people thought. Like the American Indians, their gods were the trees and the prairies and the mountains and the seas and the lakes.

Q: Even my ancestors believed there was a god in Lake Victoria. They never actually saw him but they knew when he was angry.

A: And the Kikuyu, Mt. Kenya.

Q: But you know why you would have a hard time selling that is you are preaching that to people who are running as fast as they can from the idea that there was a god on Mt. Kenya or there was a god in Lake Victoria and it’s not just that the missionaries did a great job, but people want to be modern.

A: Churches are fashionable, aren’t they?

Q: Yes, that’s more or less what I’m trying to say. But your view then is that there isn’t enough weight given to environmental considerations in longterm planning.

A: It’s improving, it’s coming but it’s taking too long. And I’m not saying Kenya alone. Of course it’s the world. I’m saying that we need a better example of what’s wrong with building in wetlands in Nairobi.

Just look at Bangkok. Bangkok is in the papers today, sinking into a swamp.

Q: One last thing. Not every reader

will understand how it is that you were Andrew Cole (or Lord Cole) in your early days as the owner of Sunbird Aviation, and later CEO of Kenya Airways; and then later on you were Andrew Enniskillen (or Lord Enniskillen) as you are now. Also, one would wonder how it was possible that you actually attended sittings of the House of Lords, while you were in fact a Kenyan citizen. Maybe you could explain this a little bit.

A: The Earl of Enniskillen is the hereditary title of the head of our family and he has several other more minor titles – Viscount Cole, being one. It is the practice to allow the eldest son to use that title while his father is alive, but upon his death the eldest son, or closest male relative if he has no son, becomes the Earl of Enniskillen.

I am the 7th Earl since the title was created in the 18th Century. By Writ of Summons from the King that gives me a seat in the House of Lords. There are about 700 Hereditary Peers and at that time about 400 Life Peers – appointed for their lifetime but their peerage ceases upon death.

The main function of the House of Lords was to act as a check and balance for legislation coming from the House of Commons – the elected politicians. Bills were reviewed, often improved, and sent back to the Commons. They would usually accept those changes, but if they refused they could overrule the House of Lords after about a two-year process of negotiation.

Not all Hereditary Peers attended the House of Lords. Some would attend but not take part in debates. In order to be allowed to participate, you had to make a maiden speech first – a rather intimidating affair. There were, like me, a very few Commonwealth Peers, neither UK citizens nor resident in the UK but that was allowed under the rules of the House. I informed President Moi and got his permission to participate.

It was obviously difficult for me to attend regularly from this distance, but I did as much as possible to learn the ropes and feel less of a new boy. I inherited my seat in 1989 and attended every year since then but I didn’t make my maiden speech until

I’m on record as saying, ‘prioritize the environment; give it a bigger consideration in the Budget’. If you read Vision 2030, there’s hardly a mention of the natural environment, yet without the environment, manufacturing isn’t going to be possible because there is no water ”

November 1996. I was participating in a debate on the opportunities presented for young people to gain employment.

I drew on my experience in the Lake Naivasha Management process, highlighting opportunities for graduates to assist in environmental education and monitoring.

Judging by the unusually high number of subsequent speakers who congratulated me, it went down okay. From then on I was entitled to speak in debates.

Of course in 1999 all Hereditary Peers were thrown out by the Blair government and we were rather unceremoniously asked to return our keys and passes and pack up.

I refused in protest at what I considered an unconstitutional and unnecessary act, although the House of Lords certainly needed reform – but the new system is no better. The Hereditary Peers did a huge amount of the work and some were among the very top debaters and with wide experience.

A great deal of the work of course was done behind the scenes, reading up on subjects, communicating in writing and so on and thus I was able to contribute without necessarily speaking. Time in debate was always very limited anyway. The few Commonwealth Peers brought added experience from overseas. So I had 10 years there in all and consider myself very fortunate to have had such an opportunity and to meet and listen to so many great people.

In addition to being Aviation East Africa’s Commissioning Editor, Wycliffe Muga is the Weekend Editor as well as a columnist for The Star. He also contributes a weekly “Letter from Africa” to the BBC World Service (Business Daily). He is a former columnist for the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper, and the monthly magazines, Nairobi-based Diplomat East Africa, and the London-based African Business. In 2006, he was listed by the Financial Times as Kenya’s most influential print commentator.

And in 2011, he won the Diageo Africa Business Reporting Award prize for ‘Best Tourism Feature’. He is also a previous winner (2004/5) of the Peter Jenkins Awards for East African Conservation Journalism. Mr. Muga is a Fellow of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and of the Property and Environment Research Centre (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana.

January 2012

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Traveller’s Tales |

Conservation

Protecting the Aberdares ecosystem required keeping the local people from poaching the wildlife, grazing it with livestock, and cutting the indigenous trees for firewood. A 240 mile electric fence enclosing 850 square miles (one-quarter the size of Yellowstone National Park) could accomplish this task, but only if the locals saw a direct benefit from it. By TERRY ANDERSON

Electrifying Pachyderms A

s we sat eating dinner, a dark shadow loomed in the doorway of the dining room. We turned to consider its source and saw a huge bull elephant, red from rolling in the surrounding soil, heading for a drink of the sweet rain water collected in the cistern.

Because the best view was from the bedroom, we pushed back from the meal and quickly went there. Our Kenyan friend, Wycliffe, opened the curtain to expose the giant pachyderm’s trunk reaching for the water less than 10 feet from where we stood, with only a thin pane of glass separating us. Not happy with his audience, the bull flared his ears in a sign of anger,

causing us to close the curtain and retreat to the “safety” of the dining room, leaving the elephant to drink in peace. How did we get into this perilous situation?

We were in Aberdare National Park in Central Kenya at the invitation of Colin Church and the foundation which he chairs, Rhino Ark. To get there we hired a driver and Toyota Land Cruiser and drove three hours from Nairobi. Our first stop was the park headquarters, where we registered for entry into the park and paid our fees.

For three days we would be visiting the dense, high mountain forests starting at 6,800 feet and rising to over 10,000, the cost was $370-$50 per person per day for foreigners, $20 for Kenyan citizens (Wycliffe

The grass is equally green on both sides of the fence: With Mt. Kenya rising majestically in the background, an elephant grazes on its side of the fence as a villager, far right backround, goes undisturbed about his business.

80 |

and David), and $30 for the vehicle. We were issued a Smart Card, similar to a debit card, which we were to present at the gate, a pretty high-tech way of proving that we paid and of monitoring gate attendants to ensure that they were not skimming money from the park.

Though the Smart Cart was high-tech, it was obvious that the Aberdares would be a wilderness experience the instant we left

the headquarters (not located within the park) and started up the road to the main gate. That road was not paved and not even graveled; it was mostly two deep ruts with an occasional diversion to two tyre tracks through the grass. Along the way, small, productive corn (maize) fields were tended by their owners; children walked along, some dressed in school uniforms and some carrying huge loads of sticks to fuel the Turn to P82 January 2012

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Conservation

A river runs through it: Above, a brook bubbles undisturbed in the Aberdares. Centre, a waterfall deep in the forest.

From P81

home fires; and we passed through a tiny village which sported a blue shack with a sign reading “Highway Shop”.

We arrived at the gate displaying two rhino silhouettes cut from metal and were greeted by a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) armed guard and a “customer service representative”.

The former was a demonstration that the park was serious about keeping poachers out and wildlife in, and the latter was to check our Smart Card. More impressive than the guard and the high tech, however, were the many strands of electric wire running in both directions from the gate. As we learned the next day that is what this visit was all about.

Fee The road improved once we passed through the gate, thanks partly to the high entrance fee, but it still resembled nothing one would find in a US national park. As the rain poured and the Land Cruiser slid sideways, it was clear the four-wheel drive was a necessary mode of transportation.

The dense bush presented long vistas found in other parts of Kenya and provided perfect cover for the wildlife. The occasional clearing surprised us, up close and personal, with ugly warthogs, fleeting bushbuck, menacing Cape buffalo, and enormous forest elephants. Though we saw no black rhino or bongo, two very rare species found in Aberdares, the abundance of other 82 |

Rhino charge: A rhinocerous goes on a trot on its side of the fence.

animals made it evident that KWS was accomplishing its goal of conserving wildlife.

Miles from the entrance we came to our wilderness accommodation, Rhino Retreat, a small lodge built by British army engineers in the early 1990s. The lodge consists of three bedrooms for guests, a living room and dining room complete with a fireplace and spectacular view of Mount Kenya, a kitchen, and staff quarters. As a “self-catering” lodge, Rhino Retreat requires that visitors bring their own food, though Sammy is there to do the cooking, and 20

litres of fuel for the generator which supplies the electricity.

Rhino Retreat is surrounded by lava rocks that ostensibly keep large animals such as elephant described earlier from getting too close to the lodge. And it wasn’t just the one big elephant that did not get the message about the purpose of the rock. Four other bulls appeared before the bedroom window to tell us goodnight, and, another night, 25 Cape buffalo bedded down with only the same thin pane of glass to protect us.

PHOTOGRAPHY | RHINO ARK

Above and below: Sections of the fence.

One cannot simply book a reservation at the retreat because it is solely for use by Rhino Ark (www.rhinoark.org), a foundation whose mission is “to raise such funds and material support as are required for the building of an electrified fence to encircle both the Aberdares National Park and the demarcated forestry areas which make up the Aberdares Conservation Area”.

Ecosystem Originally the foundation intended to focus on rhino preservation, but realized that it was the ecosystem of the Aberdares Mountain Range that was crucial to pachyderms and other endangered wildlife.

Protecting the Aberdares ecosystem required keeping the local people from poaching the wildlife, grazing it with livestock, and cutting the indigenous trees for firewood. A 240 mile electric fence enclosing 850 square miles (one-quarter the size of Yellowstone National Park) could accomplish this task, but only if the locals saw a direct benefit from it.

After a night of animal watching from our pillows, we headed back to park headquarters for a briefing on the

An electrified fence encircles the Park and designated forestry areas ”

partnership between KWS and Rhino Ark and a lesson in how to make local people see the Aberdares ecosystem as an asset worth preserving. Instantly, Colin Church, chairman of Rhino Ark, seemed like a lifelong friend.

Before becoming chairman, Colin was an international journalist and ran a successful business in Nairobi. He is a gentle person and avid fisherman whose

concern for the Aberdares’ wildlife and the ecosystem which supports them has taken him on a 21-year journey to complete the fence around the Aberdares Conservation Area. Viewing the dense, high mountain terrain makes it obvious why the fence took so long to complete. First there was the task of clearing a path through the trees and Turn to P84 January 2012

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Traveller’s Tales |

Conservation

From P83

brush; then of digging a trench three-feet deep to bury woven wire to keep warthogs from digging under the fence; then of digging of post holes; then finding posts that would last; then of powering the fence in a wilderness without electrical service; and finally of patrolling to ensure that the fence is keeping animals in and livestock and wood gatherers out.

Colin beamed as he shows pictures of the animals, waterfalls, and forests inside the fence and describes the day when the final post was sunk into the ground to complete the enclosure. It is clear, however, that his passion goes beyond nature to include the people who live with the park and its animal residents.

Plastic To give us a real sense of what the fence is about, Colin leads us across 30 kilometres of rough mountain roads to the opposite side of the park. There we inspect the plastic posts that bend instead of breaking when elephants test the barrier and check to see that the wires are actually carrying 7,000 volts of solar-powered electricity. This voltage is sufficient to repel even the most aggressive pachyderms.

We also meet eight community leaders, six men and two women, who explain through an interpreter what the fence means to them. Before the fence was completed in October 2009, elephants left the park at night to consume and trample corn crops.

Sometimes they would even seek out the seed corn stored in the hunts, destroying the villagers’ homes and

Good fences make good neigbours: Members of the community help put up the poles while, centre, technical staff install the electrical wire and, below, a family walks safely on their side of the fence.

even killing some residents. For these people living on the edge of subsistence, such destruction was more than an inconvenience. With the fence completed, however, their crops, homes, and selves are safe. They explain to us that land values have increased 100% due to the insurance provided by the fence and offer us a bag of plums, surplus produce they would not have had before the fence.

Conservation Not only does the fence protect them from elephants, it has helped them understand the value of conservation.

Some of the villagers have jobs in the park; some are allowed access through the fence to graze their animals in certain areas; and some collect firewood from the exotic trees that are invading the park.

The villagers are also learning about entrepreneurship. They are exploring whether they can grow butterflies — actually cocoons — in the forest and sell them to people in Europe and the United States who can watch the butterflies hatch in their homes, and they are searching for ways to reduce their dependence on wood as a source of fuel.

Thanks to Colin Church and the Rhino Ark fence, Aberdares National Park has become an asset rather than a liability to the community.

Terry Anderson is the executive director of PERC and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Anderson’s work helped launch the idea of “free market environmentalism” with the publication of his book by that title, co-authored with Donald Leal. Government subsidies often degrade the environment, he points out, and private property rights encourage resource stewardship by harnessing market incentives to individual initiative for protecting environmental quality. Anderson is the author or editor of more than 30 books including Environmental Markets: A Property Rights Approach with Gary Libecap (forthcoming) and The Not So Wild, Wild West with P. J. Hill. Anderson has published widely in both professional journals and the popular press. He received his B.S. from the University of Montana and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington. Anderson is an avid outdoorsman accomplished at big game hunting, bird shooting, fishing, skiing and hiking. He visited Kenya in 2009 and again in 2010 to give seminars at Strathmore University.

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Foreigners |

Gabriel Teo

The story of Gabriel Teo, a volunteer missionary who lives and works among some of Kenya’s poorest people, is a remarkable saga of a caring Malaysian national’s effort to empower a marginalized community in the Tana Delta with education and agricultural skills. By ALPHONCE GARI

The Tourist Who Became the Resident Good Samaritan of Idsowe

H

e resigned from a well-paying job as a Tax Accountant in faraway Singapore to engage in charitable work in a poverty-stricken and marginalized community in Kenya’s Tana River region.

Gabriel Teo, 46, now lives a Spartan existence in the hardship area of Idsowe, near the Tana River, with the local people. He has bridged huge cultural and ethnic differences to empower them with educational and survival skills through innovative small-scale

projects. The Teo story began way back in 1988, when he first came to Kenya on holiday as a fresh graduate from university. His first encounter with poverty Kenyan style was in Turkana, in the Catholic Diocese of Lodwar, where lack of even the most basic human needs like access to clean water amongst the community shocked him.

During his stay on holiday Teo went as far afield as Tana River District, an area largely inhabited by pastoralists and smallholder subsistence farmers.

Most of Idsowe’s locals then hardly went beyond the primary school level. Among the Orma community, very few could go to university because of the financial challenges, cultural inhibitions and their parents’ ignorance on the great value of education.

Men were almost invariably supposed to take care of cattle for life and women to bear children, cook and construct and maintain the most rudimentary housing for the family, with education being considered to be a low priority waste of time. For the Pokomos, early marriages making it difficult to break out of the poverty cycle was one of the major obstacles.

Poverty The result was a community in which grinding poverty, ignorance and disease held them back on every index of human development and social mobility, including child nutrition and early education. In 1997, Teo decided to join the community, eat, drink, and sleep with them so as to understand the root cause of the problem and be part of the solution. By the time he embarked on this missionary decision, he was already supporting individual students to complete high school and engaging others in social work. All these efforts culminated in the setting up of a private trust – the Tana River Life Foundation (TRLF) in 2005.

Teo’s lifestyle is austere to the point of being monastic. Other foreigners who work in other hardship areas, as well as local professionals working for not dissimilar projects, prefer to live in luxury hotels or villas and only come to the field during the day. Not so Teo, who lives in a simple rented house among the locals. Behind it is a section set aside for the offices, very small and cramped, but they act as the Foundation’s headquarters.

The Teo compound and office area is steeped in the silence of libraries and Turn to P86

January 2012

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Foreigners |

Gabriel Teo PHOTOGRAPHY | ALPHONCE GARI

From P85

other serious study areas and the students sponsored by the Foundation clearly have a space conducive to studies, learning and reflection. Teo’s no-nonsense reputation when it comes to educational matters precedes him. When its study time, he insists they keep things quiet, but when its work or playtime, he openly welcomes some noise and laughter.

I find him in the office with his laptop, no doubt communicating with some of the donors who fund him to help some of the needy students of Tana River and beyond. The TRLF operates in Idsowe, Garsen Division, in Tana River District, in the Coast Province of Kenya, and now has one base, that is in Idsowe, although the area of coverage extends to all neighboring districts.

All of the Foundation’s activities are aimed at benefiting rural communities, especially the marginalized members of these communities. Although most of the beneficiaries are from the Delta district, schools and students in the two neighbouring districts of Lamu and Tana River also benefit from TRLF programmes.

Norm Living the local life is quite the norm for Teo, who says, “I find it comfortable. For me, it’s not doing anything out of the ordinary”.

He clearly would not have it any other way.

He says it has helped him to understand the community better and establish the best ways to help improve the standards of education in the area and with those uplift other living standards too.

“I have been staying here in since 1997, eating the local meals, using the same amenities and it has helped me understand them even better and set up better ways of helping them,” he says early in our conversation.

Teo says he was introduced to Idsowe by a bishop who had raised concerns over the poverty levels in a conversation with him and he was soon sponsoring children in school using his retirement fund accumulated while he was working in Singapore. After many a small-scale humanitarian intervention, it was not until December 13, 2005, that Teo managed to set up the Foundation as a private trust. On December 6, 2007, he registered it as a nongovernmental organization with the Kenya Non-Governmental Organziations (NGO) Board so as to cope with the increased scope of work.

That scope has grown exponentially over the years. The Foundation now has an annual expenditure averaging Sh20 million for its projects, the bulk of the funds coming from organizations and individuals 86 |

in Malaysia and Singapore. ‘‘The aim of this Foundation is to help the locals to be selfreliant, make them responsible with the little earning they get, and ensure they do not forget their backgrounds, which have involved a lot of hardship,’’ Teo says.

According to its records, the Foundation is sponsoring four full-degree scholarships overseas for bright needy students doing degree courses in Electrical Engineering, Information Systems and Business Administratio.

The sponsored scholars are local role models setting an example for others to work hard and aim high. In January 2012, the Foundation will be sending their fifth sponsored student to do a degree in

On the farm: Gabriel Teo with a team of farming students.

Accounting under the overseas scholarship programme.

The Foundation also spends about Sh8 million each year to sponsor students from needy families whose parents or guardians cannot afford to pay their school fees at secondary and tertiary levels.

Nurture Teo says the Foundation was created to assist members of the local communities, especially the most marginalized and economically disadvantaged, to nurture their inherent talents and potentials so that they have the freedom and ability to make meaningful choices in their lives.

As a way of empowering the students

Left: Three student tend crops grown by small-scale irrigation.

Right: Joseph Otieno, a teacher at Garsen Primary School in the modern library donated by Tana Athi Life Foundation.

with survival skills, the Foundation purchased 10 acres of land for farming activities as a pilot project so that students waiting to go to college can keep themselves busy and earn a little income.

Those in high school usually work on the farm on a part-time basis during the holidays.

“I give each student capital of Sh200 to start with and plant vegetables in a small piece of land throughout the year using the Money Maker irrigation process; the products are then sold locally”, he says, adding that the profit is usually kept by the student as pocket money and to assist with the families’ daily bread.

Sustainable Apart from the farming the students are also taught bee- and poultry-keeping using the cheapest methods that are affordable and sustainable in the local environment.

The Foundation also has two buses, which are used to ferry students to Garsen High School, an institution largely sponsored by TRLF. The buses are sometimes hired out to generate income for the Foundation.

The TRLF has spent over Sh12 million at Garsen High School to improve infrastructure, including the construction and facilitation of a twin laboratory project at a cost of Sh6 million, and a library and a bakery at Sh4 million.

The farm’s well-irrigated lush green stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding sun-drenched areas, which are dry and parched due to the prolonged drought.

It is a hive of activity, with everybody on

My

main motivation is not philanthropic, I believe this is what I am called to do with my talents, and it is not a sacrifice as such for me.

I do believe I am only doing what I am supposed to do, and am satisfieds ”

the farm busy with his or her work, some harvesting sukuma wiki while others plant.

Teo observes: “Diligence and discipline are the key motto here because idleness has really contributed to drunkenness and early pregnancies amongst some youths, leading to high dropout rates”.

Teo adds that he and the students usually have night meetings daily to discuss social and moral issues openly and he always encourages his wards to speak up about their lives without fear so as to help those who need counseling.

The Foundation, which survives on donor funding, has yet to approve good salaries; its staffers earn not more than Sh12,000 monthly, which is what Teo himself gets. The rest earn a little below that.

Kazungu Benedict Kambi, who did not get the opportunity to study beyond Standard Eight takes me around the farm solemnly says TRLF has helped him realize his potential in life.

After completing his primary education, he says, life was terrible but when he met Teo things changed as he was encouraged to enroll for a course in a polytechnic and now is a qualified Grade One mechanic.

Kazungu manages the bookkeeping records for petty cash expenditures and is said to be doing a good job.

Hope He takes me to the farm, where I encounter faces of hope, the students being sponsored each clearly having a goal to succeed in life. I find Simon Saitoti Buko, one of the beneficiaries, tending to poultry under a shelter for the chicks and he smiles as he stands up to greet me.

“I came here in 2006 after completing Standard Eight to seek support so as to further my studies, I volunteered for six months and qualified for Form One the following year”, he says.

Buko is the first-born in a family of three.

He describes how tough life was after his parents divorced and he was forced to live at his grandmother’s.

He says the Sh200 capital generated about Sh4,000 from his sukuma wiki patch on the farm, which he is still harvesting and expects to get even more money from the poultry section.

Malindi Moses Gwiyo, 21, lost his father in 2006, when he was in Standard Eight and almost lost hope of proceeding with studies until Teo came to his rescue. After six months of community service in the Foundation, he was enrolled in secondary school and managed to score a D plain.

His vision was to study accounting, but, due to the circumstances and his grades, he went for carpentry and masonry instead.

Being in the Foundation at the same

time as he was pursuing his carpentry course has taught Gwiyo valuable multitasking skills and his ambitions have soared accordingly: “My ambition is to become a successful businessman; in January I harvested five 50-kilogramme bags of peas at Sh5,000 each, and harvested 15 bags of maize from our farm at home, which enabled me to build a good house for my mother”.

Income Gwiyo says he has learnt many farming skills at TRLF and he looks at land in a completely different way now – as capable of generating a lot of income and dramatically improving standards of living.

The only problem with the community, he says, is sloth and lack of the foresight necessary to see the value of engaging in economically viable activity.

A sea change is essential at the level of the communal mindset for the people of the Delta. To this end, TRLF members are usually brought together to share life experiences so as to understand the various challenges faced by individuals and seek ways of overcoming them jointly.

Teo has great plans for the Foundation’s near-future expansion: “The Community centre shall have a solar system that is estimated to cost Sh16 million, servicing the nursery, primary, security fence, guardhouse, water and power supply”.

He goes on: “Our plan is to build a Community Centre housing a pre-primary and primary school offering quality education, a community library and computer and Internet centre offering high-speed connectivity, a meeting and conference facility for training and accommodation and catering facilities for staff and visitors”.

He adds, “There will also be a TRLF administrative support centre with income generating units worth Sh10 million, staff and visitor accommodation and an ecosanitation system at a cost of Sh20 million”.

The tourist who became the live-in Good Samaritan of Idsowe is clearly both passionate and totally committed to the human development endeavour he launched so many years ago and in whose future and expansion he has invested all his efforts and the balance of his life.

Good causes do not come much better than the TRLF and Good Samaritans like Teo come along only once in a very long time indeed, for both individuals and communities.

In his own words: “My main motivation is not philanthropic, I believe this is what I am called to do with my talents, and it is not a sacrifice as such for me. I do believe I am only doing what I am supposed to do, and am satisfied”.

January 2012

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Big Ideas Forum |

Innovations for a Changing World

If they are able to prove their model of profits from waste, energy, and fertilizer, while solving one of the greatest urban woes, then they will begin replicating the solution in other urban centres around the world

W

hen you first hear the term “flying toilet” while strolling through a Kenyan slum, your imagination runs wild. Then, when you discover the definition – a small polythene grocery bag used as a toilet and carelessly tossed out the window of a residence onto the street – you all of a sudden are hit with a strange mix of astonishment and disgust.

Was that seriously what I just stepped on?

Finding a (decent) bathroom facility in a big city is never a fun endeavour.

Anyone who’s been to New York City can probably sympathize – the endless dance from street to street, hoping to spot something, a public toilet, port-o-john, familiar restaurant, anything. Perhaps you end up finally dipping into a Starbucks or McDonalds, purchasing a steamy (low-fat, sugar free, vanilla, half decaf?) latte or a frosty McFlurry for $2, earning yourself the privilege of a (relatively) clean bathroom somewhere on the lower east side. That was nice, now wasn’t it?

Now, imagine a setting in which nearly half the population lacks access to proper sanitation. And as for the other half, almost 70% use the crudest form of a “toilet” available – a hole in the ground.

In Nairobi, Kenya, $2 is likely half of many people’s daily income. There are certainly no Starbucks, and only a handful of overcrowded, extremely unhygienic, and sometimes unsafe public toilets are scattered around the centre of the city – most of which have fallen into disrepair and cannot be used. In the slums, where the majority of residents don’t have toilets in their dwellings, the solution is a small row of wooden shacks (pit latrines) with holes in the floor, built on raised platforms and shared by up to 300-400 households. When it rains, there is nothing more than a few pieces of eroded wood stopping disease carrying organic matter from swiftly floating around the neighbourhood.

It’s been more than 30 years since the Kenyan Government invested in urban public sanitation facilities, and what little infrastructure has remained from the early era of independence was not built for a nearly four-fold increase in urban population.

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Nairobi, the Silicon Valley of Sanitation Yet where the Government has lacked the funds, initiative, and directive for innovation in sanitation, a unique blend of social entrepreneurs have flocked to Nairobi, all seeking one, noble goal: How to profit from Kenya’s waste.

Sanergy: Waste, Energy, Fertilizer “Nairobi’s become the Silicon Valley of [poo]”, claims Ani Vallabhaneni, Co-founder of Sanergy, a company recently launched by young graduates from MIT Sloan School of Business that is one of several trying to

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

Putrefaction Alley: Filth fills a city slum’s walkway as a Fresh Life Toilet social worker approaches a resident.

World Toilet Day, November 19: Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Khisia and Sanergy Co-founder Lindsay Stradley preside over the official launch of Sanergy’s newest Fresh Life Toilets in the city’s Mukuru kwa Njenga slum.

revolutionize, and profit from, the flailing sanitation industry in Kenya.

Sanergy (literally Sanitation + Energy) began as an idea in a Massachusetts classroom to decentralize waste collection and processing, and quickly blossomed into a practical way of bringing toilets to Kenya’s slums, while impacting the sanitation, energy, and even agriculture industries across Kenya.

Winners of a recent $100,000 business plan competition from MIT, Sanergy is now piloting their model of pay-per-use toilets, branded “Fresh Life”, around the slums of Nairobi.

Their goal is to create a network of franchised low-cost toilets in slums, owned and operated by local entrepreneurs, while

also providing an affordable option for residential toilets.

Yet their business model isn’t simply about building toilets and empowering entrepreneurs – in fact that’s just the beginning. Rather than septic tanks, pit

Outhouses old and new: A Fresh Life Toilet stands next to outmoded latrines.

latrines, or sewer systems, the Fresh Life toilets collect waste in airtight containers.

Collected each day, the biomass will eventually feed a centralized biogas digester, converting it into both Methane gas to produce electricity, and nutrient-rich fertilizer that can be sold on market.

Once they reach 1,000 toilets, which they project will be by 2013, they will be able to produce one megawatt of electricity and begin selling power directly back into the grid.

Sanergy could have been launched anywhere in the world – with over 2.6 billion people in the world lacking access to proper sanitation, there is no market shortage – yet Ani says that Nairobi was a strategic place because “It’s a combination of the right market conditions and the existence of an ecosystem”.

In Kenya, culturally, privacy and dignity are greatly valued – and yet when it comes to sanitation consumers seem to be “hacking together solutions like flying toilets” he says, which showcases a real market opportunity for solutions. And, contrary to what many people may think of when they imagine African slums, businesses are thriving. Customers are more than willing to pay for services, if they are affordable and available.

In fact, consumers are already paying for toilets. The slums are full of informal and patched together pay-per-use toilets, which cost about the same to use as a Fresh Life, but don’t have adequate waste disposal. Additionally, residents typically pay more to have a toilet in their residential Turn to P90 January 2012

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plot or block – as it’s a safer and more convenient option – and Sanergy hopes to tap into that market. “It’s easy from an ROI standpoint,” says Sanergy co-founder Lindsay Stradley, “People will pay a couple hundred shillings more per month for a toilet. It would be easy for a landlord to make the money back”.

Lastly, with fertilizer prices in Kenya twice the global average because of a lack of domestic production, and an ever growing demand for energy, Sanergy won’t be very hard-pressed to find customers for its two byproducts.

The company is still in its early stages, yet the demand for a solution to the widespread sanitation problem is only growing. If they are able to prove their model of profits from waste, energy, and fertilizer, while solving one of the greatest urban woes, then they will begin replicating the solution in other urban centres around the world.

PeePoople – Just a Bag? PeePoople, a social enterprise hailing from Sweden, is another one making a (waterless) splash in Nairobi’s slums.

They recently received a €1.6 million grant to continue piloting the sales of small, single-use hygienic bags called “The PeePoo”, which turns human waste into fertilizer.

The bags sanitize the waste matter shortly after defecation, preventing it from contaminating the surrounding environment. After just a few weeks, the bags convert the waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer.

The PeePoo bags, which sell at a subsidized (by Peepoople) cost of KSh3 each, are used at home, then returned to one of two “drop off” points where customers get a KSh1 incentive refund for returning the bags.

While some may protest the idea of using nothing more than a chemically treated doggy bag as a “sanitation solution”, first, consider the alternatives – the flying toilets and filthy communal pit latrines leave much to be desired.

Peepoople Co-founder Camilla Wirseen claims the bags have “a nice touch, nice feeling, and they don’t smell after you’re done”, stating that in fact The PeePoo is one of the few solutions that actually meets all of the requirements for the World Health Organization’s HYPERLINK “http://www.peepoople.com/ showpage.php?page=4_4”guiding principles for “sanitation”, even though it may seem counterintuitive. With no running water and little space to build proper toilets, The 90 |

Official opening: Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Khisia assisted by a local women’s leader commissions a Fresh Life Toilet unit owned and operated by Caroline Mueni Mutua, right.

Peepoo is certainly an innovative, if not interesting, personal option.

Ecotact – a Homegrown Solution It’s not just international efforts that are hawking new toilets in Kenya. The first company to actually attempt to privatize the fledging sanitation sector in 2006 was Ecotact, a homegrown social enterprise that set out to bring clean, affordable, pay-peruse toilets and showers to Kenya’s urban centres.

In just five years, the company has installed over 40 “Ikotoilet” facilities across the country, all running profitably and

collectively serving over 30,000 people a day.

“We invest in innovations,” says Founder and CEO David Kuria, a former architect with an MBA and a passion for pushing the needle on social solutions.

When Ecotact came about, “urban public sanitation was a nightmare”, David recalls, “so we started with the toilet because we felt it was the most complex thing”.

Originally, the company intended to simply pilot innovative models of sanitation, and let either other private companies or the Government scale them – then move on to other social issues like clean water and garbage collection. But the demand was so

high, David says, that they simply couldn’t abandon them.

The Ikotoilet runs on a unique BuildOperate-Transfer model that depends on participation, and ultimate ownership, of government municipalities. The municipalities secure use of public lands, and lease the land for 3-5 years (for free) to Ecotact.

Ecotact then agrees to build and run an Ikotoilet facility for five years – or until they’ve recouped their costs, and at the end of the contract gives the Government the option of either renewing the lease or taking over the Ikotoilet themselves. The

Toilet training: Lindsay Stradley of Sanergy and a colleague conduct a training seminar for entrepreneurs whose applications for Fresh Life community toilets have been approved.

Winning Team: From left, Ani Vallabhaneni, David Auerbach, and Lindsay Stradley after winning the Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge.

Public sanitation is about creating social equity for the poor – giving everyone the choice of a clean, private space to go to the bathroom or shower gives them the basic right of sanitation ”

hope is that the Government takes these facilities over, though the company is still young and has not yet come to the point of a contract renewal.

In David’s view, public sanitation is about creating social equity for the poor – giving everyone the choice of a clean, private space to go to the bathroom or shower gives them the basic right of sanitation that, in many instances, governments aren’t providing.

The Ikotoliet doesn’t simply provide sanitation. It can provide employment and opportunity to disadvantaged citizens, youth, and the disabled.

“We are proving the model so that we can touch upon the vulnerable as a sustainable income base – instead of being seen as hopelessness”, says Mr. Kuria.

“Why not empower women to run and manage Ikotoilets? Why can’t physically disabled manage Ikotoilets? It will be accelerating job creation, and accelerating sanitation.”

In Kawangware, a slum 15km outside the centre of Nairobi, I spent a few hours alongside Jane Wangu, the head cashier of an Ikotoilet facility who has worked since

its opening nearly a year ago. Jane, mother of three and widowed a few years ago, sees her job as “community work”, and not just another source of income. She feels it has brought a big impact to the community, and even cites instances of residents in surrounding neighbourhoods instructing their guests to use the Ikotoilet facilities, instead of their own rudimentary facilities at home.

The Ikotoliet in the Central Business District of Nairobi, directly in front of the National Archives, even has an M-Pesa (mobile money) agent station, and a shoeshining service built into the facility.

It is this type of atmosphere surrounding the Ikotoilets, along with Ecotact’s efforts to promote sanitation in schools, work with celebrity endorsements, and produce their “eco-digest” magazine that shows how Ecotact is thinking “beyond the toilet” and pursuing a social shift in public attitude towards sanitation.

On this year’s World Toilet Day, November 19th, we acknowledged the fact that 2.6 billion people around the world lack access to proper sanitation, and turned the world’s attention to a sticky problem that isn’t talked about enough.

Yet at the same time, we should be acknowledging the incredible potential that a toilet holds – beyond offering a sense of dignity and drastic public health advantages to citizens, a toilet can give us energy for a city, fertilizer for the farms, and employment for youth and disadvantaged citizens.

For just KSh5 ($.06) – the price of piece of candy on the street – or less, citizens all over Kenya now have something they never had before; a choice. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bag, a box, or a nice clean facility with your own personal shower or bathroom. It’s something cleaner, safer, and better.

From the Silicon Valley of pooinnovation, the Big Idea is that these fresh young social enterprises are developing new approaches to global problems, starting right here in Nairobi. All this writer can say is that I wish there were more Ikotoilets, PeePoos, and Fresh Lifes around the world – especially in New York City.

Maybe one day . . .

Jonathan Kalan is an internationally published photojournalist, journalist and blogger specializing in the intersections of business, innovation and social development in emerging markets. In just 24 years he has traveled to over 35 countries, worked in South Asia and Africa, and collaborated with NGO’s, social enterprises, technology start ups, and media companies.

His work has appeared in The Guardian, Financial Times, Boston Globe, GlobalPost, The Huffington Post, The Star (Kenya), Stanford Social Innovation Review, Destination Magazine EA, How We Made It In Africa, The Christian Science Monitor, On The Ground (New York Times blog), and many others. He was a Finalist for the 2011 Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards.

Jonathan is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, freelancing and documenting stories of social enterprises, entrepreneurs, and innovations for The (BoP) Project.

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EventoftheMonth |

The Talk of Nairobi

Exhibition Fires the Imagination in Salute to Year of People of African Descent 92 |

PHOTOGRAPHY | DUNCAN NDOTONO

A

n evocative place which scientific and archaeological research identifies as the Cradle of Mankind . . . this is where millions of years ago Man began a migration that has never ended – Italian Ambassador to Kenya Paola Imperiale On 18 December 2009, with Resolution No.64/169, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the year 2011 the International Year of People of African Descent.

As Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, put it at the time: “The International Year must become a milestone in the on-going campaign to advance the rights of people of African descent. It deserves to be accompanied by activities that fire the imagination, enhance our understanding of

Above: Visitors at the art exhibition Below: Her Excellency The Italian Ambassador to Kenya Paola Imperiale, and Artist Ludivico Gilbertis

the situation of people of African descent and are a catalyst for real and positive change in the daily lives of the millions of Afro-descendants around the world’’.

Cultural, political and economic The following is the full text of Italian Ambassador to Kenya Paola Imperiale on the occasion of the official opening Italian artist Ludovico Gilberti’s photographic

exhibition “Women in Africa, No Color One Color” in Nairobi in November.

The Italian Embassy and Italian Institute of Culture of Nairobi have gladly accepted the idea of hosting Ludovico Gilberti’s exhibition “Women in Africa, No Color One Color”.

Gilberti’s exhibition acquires particular relevance in 2011, the year which the General Assembly of the United Nations has chosen to devote to people of African descent, in order to promote the respect and protection of their rights by fostering an awareness of their cultural heritage.

Men and women of African origin are to be found in contexts of all sorts nowadays.

They are making an important contribution to their adopted societies by assuming leading roles at a cultural, political and economic level worldwide.

Millions of years ago By now a prominent factor on the international stage and the catalyst of forms of human and economic development transcending the geographical borders of the continent, the progressive integration of Africa in a global context is contributing to blurring once acutely felt distances and difference, to the point of making them disappear.

The exhibition brings together the works Gilberti has created in Kenya, an evocative place which scientific and archaeological research identifies as the Cradle of Mankind.

This is where millions of years ago Man began a migration that has never ended.

The perspective of the shared descent of Europe and Africa reveals their proximity and reciprocal interdependence: for centuries the two continents served as the points of departure and arrival for men and Turn to P94

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The Talk of Nairobi

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

women who in their mutual encounter and engagement found a means of coming together and enriching one another.

Precisely because it is based on intercultural dialogue, which, along with the economic and political dimensions represents a pillar in the development of modern society, the relation between Italy and Kenya perfectly fits this context. By virtue of its southward extension in the Mediterranean basin, Italy has always served as a natural point of arrival for African men and women.

Direct human contact The idea of a kind of travel that makes mutual encounters possible by mingling and attenuating diversity, while revealing the human proximity of different peoples, is taken up by the programme of the exhibition, which will be unfolding along an imaginary path connecting Milan (the Airport of Malpensa) and Nairobi (the Italian Institute of Culture), and extending from Malindi to Monza (Palazzo dell’Arengario).

The selection of the Italian Institute of Culture of Nairobi as the venue for this exhition of Gilberti’s photographs acquires an even more profound meaning in the light of the author’s life choice to make Kenya his

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second home and the setting for his artistic work. In this country the author portrays the faces of men and women with whom he has established direct human contact.

Because of this, the author may be regarded as one of the many Italian and Kenya artists who devote their work to bringing out the features shared by different social and cultural realities.

Essay |

Serengeti

PHOTOGRAPHY | JONATHAN KALAN

Two neighbouring ecosystems are on the verge of being destroyed forever by the thoroughly misguided and shortsighted ‘development’ policies of two of Africa’s reputedly otherwise most enlightened regimes. Bad governance doesn’t come much worse than this, argues AEA Commissioning Editor WYCLIFFE MUGA

Emerging Threats to EA Tourism and Natural Heritage

W

hen he was campaigning for reelection in late 2010, Tanzanian President JakayaKikwete promised the people of northern Tanzania that he would have a new road built that would connect the remoter parts of that region to the more densely

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populated areas to the east of the country.

This is more or less the kind of thing that any shrewd politician seeking reelection would do. But often in this part of the world, such promises are forgotten as soon as they are made. So it was remarkable that in early 2011 the plans for this road moved into high gear, with Chinese contractors reported

to be standing by, ready to begin on the construction.

However, far from bringing forth songs of praise this attempt by the Tanzanian Government to link the farmers of northern Tanzania to the markets in the east, led to a raging controversy both within Tanzania inneighbouring Kenya.

This is because the proposed road went straight through the Serengeti National Park – Tanzania’s most famous tourist attraction and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But then, World Heritage Site- or not, Kenyans normally do not concern themselves much with what roads are being built within Tanzania. So what really was the reason for this serious opposition to this road-through-the-Serengeti by Kenyan tourism stakeholders?

Well, itwas that although the Serengeti is entirely within Tanzania’s borders, in purely scientific terms, it is actually just the larger part of the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem.

Wonder The Masai Mara National Reserve in southern Kenya is a continuation of the same savannah grasslands which form the Serengeti. And for the millions of herbivores which live on this vast plain,

Above: The fabled wildebeest migration begins.

Left: Solitary wildebeest

national borders have no meaning – hence we have the famous annual wildebeest migration from the Serengeti to the Masai Mara, and back, the Seventh Wonder of the modern world.

Most credible scientific reports had it that if this road was built exactly as planned, it would in the end destroy both the Serengeti and the Masai Mara, as the essential migration pathways would be effectively blocked by the ever- increasing number of cars and lorries using this new road.

This famous Mara-Serengeti ecosystem would quite abruptly go from being ‘robust’ as it has been for many decades since it was first studied by the legendary German ecologist Bernhard Grzimek in the 1950s, and become ‘fragile’, with the certainty of immediate deterioration, and the likelihood of eventual collapse.

In short, even though the road to be built was entirely within Tanzania, the environmental devastation it was guaranteed to bring would be felt as much in Kenya as in Tanzania, with long-term economic consequences for both countries.

Thus various environmental groups within the region set out to oppose the construction of this road. Perhaps the most dramatic intervention was that of a Kenyan non-governmental organisation, the African Network for Animal Welfare, which filed a suit against the Tanzanian Government at the East African Court of Justice, claiming that the building of this road would violate key provisions of the East African Community Treaty.

More effective – if not so visible – was the work of Serengeti Watch, which, through its website, savetheserengeti.org, mobilised global public opinion against this road, and lobbied against it in the corridors of power within the donor nations who famously provide no less than 30% of Tanzania’s annual budget.

On the June 22, 2011, the “good news” came in the form of a letter from Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism to the Director of the World Heritage Centre in Paris. This letter was categorical Turn to P98

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that “the proposed road will not dissect the Serengeti National Park, and therefore will not affect the migration and conservation values of the Property”.

This was headline news all over East Africa, with Florian Kaijage’s article in the Tanzanian newspap, The Guardian on Sunday, on the June 26 being representative of the general celebratory tone in which this news was proclaimed to the public: “The government finally surrendered plans to construct a 53-kilometres tarmac road across the Serengeti National Park…, thanks to the pressure from both local and international environmental activists.”

The only voice of caution amidst the outbreak of celebration came from Serengeti Watch, which, in a newsletter titled ‘Why we are not celebrating’, noted: “In its recent letter to the World Heritage Committee, the Government of Tanzania stated that the road through the Serengeti will not be paved, but will ‘remain a gravel road’.

The truth, however, is more complicated. No gravel road exists across this 53km stretch. Much of this area is designated as a Wilderness Zone, with no public access.

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not responded to these concerns.

And this controversy over the planned roads in northern Tanzania – and whether or not they will eventually lead to some kind of road that clearly,in the words of the Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr. Ezekiel Maige,“dissects the Serengeti National Park” – is but the most prominent of a number of proposed

Above: Hippos at rest in the Serengeti.

Below: Journey across the bleak landscape that leads to Lake Turkana.

into Lake Turkana in Kenya.

Oddly enough, the objective of this giant hydroelectricity project is to sell off a good part of the power generated to Kenyan consumers. So the Turkana community, already one of the most marginalized and neglected communities in Kenya – subject to repeated patterns of drought and famine – would effectively be paying with their lives and livelihoods, for the additional power supplied to Kenya through this dam.

The area around Lake Turkana is also quite rich in wildlife, and before the current levels of insecurity in that area discouraged casual visitors, it was a thriving tourism

PHOTOGRAPHY | THINKSTOCK.COM

Zone The 10-year Serengeti management plan, painstakingly developed in 2005 by scientists, Park officials, and conservation organizations, clearly indicates that the area in the northwestern part of the Park is particularly sensitive.

As shown on the map below, the area of the proposed highway cuts through areas designated as ‘Low Use’ and ’Wilderness’ zones.

According to the management plan, the Low Use Zone ‘will have a lower number and density of visitors’ and ‘more limited road network and lower bed capacity’. The Wilderness Zone in green… ‘is subject to minimal disturbance. As a result, visitor access will be restricted to walking safaris, with game viewing by vehicle prohibited. The only infrastructure permitted will be a limited number of access roads that can be used by Park management and support vehicles for walking safari operations.

These areas were not designated lightly.

They are critical to the migration of two million animals as they make their way between Kenya and Tanzania. Of special concern to scientists is the fragmentation of this ecosystem.”

Thus far, the Tanzanian Government has

“development projects” in the region which threaten not only the natural heritage of East Africans, but also pose a grave threat to their tourism industry on which millions of jobs depend.

In its specifics – as an example of a development project in one East African nation threatening the natural heritage of another – the proposed road through the Serengeti bears comparison with the other major environmental disaster that threatens Kenya, through what is being promoted in Ethiopia as a necessary development project: the building of the Gilgel Gibe Dam on the Omo River of southern Ethiopia,the source of about 80% of the water that flows

PHOTOGRAPHY | MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE

Above: The migration path of the lesser flamingo from Lake Nakuru and other alkaline lakes to Lake Natron which is their sole breeding ground.

destination, marketed as “the Jade Sea”. But any possibility of the revival of such tourism would end abruptly with the completion of the dam on the Omo River.

Slumber And any Kenyans who imagined that these kinds of environmentally disastrous projects could only be conceived in neighbouring countries would have been woken from their slumber in mid-May, when the Kenyan Ministry of Roads announced a plan to build a key road – a portion of the road linking Nairobi to the western part of Kenya, all the way to the border with Uganda – once again right through a game park.

In this case, the park involved is the Lake Nakuru National Park, which admittedly is not the Masai Mara, or the Serengeti, but is still a valuable environmental asset which neighbouring countries like Uganda and Rwanda can only dream of having.

But the same argument applied to the Serengeti also applies here: to the extent that good roads open up to development the areas through which they pass, why not build this road round the park, even if it ends up being substantially longer? Who does this road serve when it goes for many kilometres through a game park in which there is no human settlement?

Now what Lake Nakuru is most famous for are the hundreds of thousands of flamingoes, both Lesser and Greater

Flamingo, which make it their home. And while at first it may appear that a road would be a greater threat to large carnivores and herbivores, the flamingoes too are likely to be at risk from disturbance and loss of habitat.

And in any case there is already a far more serious threat to flamingoes in the East African region. Back to Tanzania, we find that Lake Natron, the one lake which actually has more flamingoes than Lake Nakuru, also happens to have soda ash also known as sodium carbonate - which is used in making glass, chemicals, and

Above: Flamingoes on Lake Nakuru.

detergents, and is definitely a valuable mineral.

Kenya also has large deposits of this soda ash on Lake Magadi, and has long had a successful mining operation there, which even has its own connecting railway line to facilitate the delivery of the raw product to the main Nairobi-Mombasa railway. And while Lake Magadi also hosts occasional populations of flamingoes, it is not a tourist attraction, and reportedly not a flamingo breeding ground either.

So while Kenya, broadly speaking, has its soda ash in one alkali lake (Lake Magadi) and its flamingoes in another (Lake Nakuru) Tanzania unfortunately has both flamingoes and soda ash in the same lake – Lake Natron.

Furthermore, it is on the breeding grounds of Lake Natron that all the Lesser Flamingo seen and enjoyed by so many tourists at Nakuru and other places in East Africa are born and raised. In effect, all of Kenya’s Lesser Flamingo originate from Lake Natron, and anything that has a substantial negative impact on the flamingo population of Lake Natron threatens Lake Nakuru as well.

The fact that the two lakes are separated by hundreds of miles – while the Masai Mara and the Serengeti are one continuous grassland ecosystem – does not change the Turn to P100

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Serengeti

Below: Lion, buffalo, elephant and rhino.

Four of the ‘Big Five’ at the heart of the Safari expirience

From P99

basic fact that here, too, a decision made in Tanzania could have catastrophic effects on Kenya’s tourism. In any case, after having temporarily abandoned plans for extracting this soda ash in 2008, early this year, the Kikwete revived plans for setting up an extraction plant for this plentiful supply of soda ash, in Lake Natron.

Breeding According to the online environmental newsletter Mongobay.com, “This is the crux of the problem for conservationists: researchers suspect mining activities would critically disrupt breeding, but lack the research necessary to know for certain.

While the forthcoming Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) may shed some light on the issue, the government has already signaled the mine will go ahead no matter the study’s findings”.

All four cases – the (now-postponed) road-through-the-Serengeti project; the Gibe Dam; and the proposed road through the Lake Nakuru National Park; and the proposed mining of soda ash on Lake Natron– are examples of what happens when environmental considerations are left out of a government’s planning process.

In attempting to establish development infrastructure, or to exploit a mining concession, the government concerned ends up destroying a valuable natural asset.

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Kenya and Tanzania seem keen to throw away what they have (a vibrant tourism sector) in pursuit of their dreams of ‘industrialization’.

For both countries have leaders who are determined to take their nations beyond the traditional Third World dependency on tourism and primary agricultural goods, to some kind of advanced service or manufacturing economy, of which the improved infrastructure is supposed to be a key facilitator.

Under the influence of such dreams, it is easy to begin to see environmental considerations as a troublesome barrier to the nation’s march towards prosperity, forgetting that the natural environment that will be ruined by your plans and schemes is itself an asset, and a source of existing jobs and foreign exchange.

More significant yet, it is not as if there are no alternatives.

Although the Gibe Dam is expected to be one of Africa’s largest hydroelectric power projects, within the same zone in which it is located is the Lake Turkana Wind Power, project which is expected to provide clean power to Kenya’s national electricity grid by taking advantage of a unique wind resource in northwest Kenya near Lake Turkana. It is estimated to have the potential to satisfy up to 17% of Kenya’s planned total installed power upon commissioning in 2012.

As for the soda ash mining, there are conservationists who claim that, far from being a case of “development versus nature

conservation”, it is little more than a colossal destruction of unique resources for the sake of something that may actually never work.

They point out that a previous investor who showed interest in 2008-9 made it a condition that the Tanzanian Government had to build a railway from remote Lake Natron all the way to the Tanga port to export the soda ash. Any new potential investor will have to presumably set the same conditions,

PHOTOGRAPHY | THINKSTOCK.COM

because, after all, soda ash is not a rare mineral, and can be exploited at much less costs elsewhere, including in China.

Furthermore, there are experts who argue that the yearly production of Lake Natron would not be 500,000 metric tons as alleged, but much less, maybe 200,000 metric tons, and thus even less reason to build a railway for transporting this mineral to the ports in the east of the country.

And just as we can say that the road through the Serengeti could be built around that park (in the process benefitting many more people than would otherwise be the case)

Above: Professor Grzimek and a friend.

so too is it that building the Nakuru bypass road round the Lake Nakuru National Park would be far more useful than taking it right through the park.

In all, the picture painted is one of ‘development projects’ which are either of questionable value yet environmentally destructive, or which could well have been handled differently, if only due weight was given to the environmental considerations.

Egypt Taking a purely Kenyan perspective, the parallel which comes to mind is Egypt’s tourism sector, which is as central to that country’s economy as Kenya’s tourism is to Kenya. What would you think if you heard that the Egyptians proposed to build a major highway that cut right through the Valley of the Kings, the place where many of the famous tombs of the pharaohs are found, and which is visited by between 5,000 to 10,000 tourists a day?

However important that road might be, could it possibly justify bringing an end to these visits which necessarily involve many jobs for Egyptian tour guides and others who provide services to these visitors?

Of course Kenya is nowhere near Egypt when it comes to tourism numbers, with the Egyptian tourism sector being roughly ten times as large as Kenya’s: Kenya gets about 1.2 million tourists every year, while Egypt averages about 12 million.

But the greater lesson that Kenya could learn from Egypt is that of conserving the national treasures which bring the prosperous visitors to our shores.

Egypt has its ancient wonders and its Mediterranean and Red Sea shorelines: Kenya hasits game parks and the beaches down by the Indian Ocean

and the reputation of being the Cradle of Humankind, thus, in a sense, much more ancient than Egypt.

These are every bit as valuable as mineral reserves or factories. They help to create jobs, and also bring in foreign exchange. No nation, sanely governed, would ever toss aside such prime environmental assets as Lake Nakuru or the Masai Mara or indeed Lake Natron or the Serengeti.

When Egypt built the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, an entire temple complex of some 18 individual temples built into a mountainside was carefully dismantled and relocated, so that it might not be submerged under the newly-created Lake Nasser – the huge reservoir of water which resulted from the building of the dam.

The temples were moved to a new site on higher ground, called Abu Simbel, which is today one of Egypt’s top tourist attractions, and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, just like the Serengeti National Park. And the Serengeti, as we have seen, famously adjoins Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, and these parks are, essentially, two parts of the same ecosystem, neither of which can thrive without the other.

Unfortunately we cannot relocate the wildebeest migration to a more convenient corner of the country, any more than we can tell the animals within the Lake Nakuru boundaries to be careful when crossing a broad ‘bypass’ highway full of speeding lorries, or ask the Lesser Flamingo to breed somewhere other than Lake Natron.

If Kenya loses the Masai Mara, or the Lake Nakuru National Park; and if Tanzania loses the Serengeti or the flamingoes of Lake Natron, they will be lost for good.

In his best-selling book, Serengeti Shall Not Die, written in 1959, well beforemass tourism as we now know it came to East Africa, Prof Grzimek prophetically asserted: “Large cities continue to proliferate. In the coming decades and centuries, men will not travel to view marvels of engineering, but they will leave the dusty towns in order to behold the last places on earth where God’s creatures are peacefully living. Countries which have preserved such places will be envied by other nations and visited by streams of tourists.

There is a difference between wild animals living a natural life and famous buildings. Palaces can be rebuilt if they are destroyed in wartime, but once the wild animals of the Serengeti are exterminated no power on earth can bring them back.”

A version of this article was first published in Diplomat East Africa magazine

January 2012

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