Airports Everywhere, Development Nowhere: We Need to Rethink Our Priorities

By Dr. Luchetu Likaka

President William Ruto has in recent months unveiled an ambitious vision to expand airport infrastructure across the country, from upgrading existing airstrips to proposing entirely new airports in counties that have long felt excluded from national development.

On the surface, the plan carries political appeal; airports signal progress, connectivity, and modernity. But beneath that symbolism lies a deeper and more uncomfortable truth: Kenya may be investing in the wrong priorities at the wrong time.

Airports are not engines of development in isolation. They are, fundamentally, responses to existing economic activity.

Where there is strong tourism, high-value exports, or significant passenger demand, airports thrive. Where these conditions are absent, airports become costly monuments underutilised, expensive to maintain, and disconnected from local economic realities.

Many of the regions now earmarked for new aviation infrastructure simply do not generate the level of economic activity needed to justify such investments.

The risk, therefore, is not theoretical; it is the creation of white elephants funded by taxpayers in a country already grappling with fiscal constraints.

JKIA’s Ongoing Challenges

What makes this push even more puzzling is that Kenya’s primary aviation gateway, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, continues to struggle with capacity, inefficiencies, and delayed expansion.

If the ambition is to position Kenya as a regional logistics hub, then logic dictates that the country should first fix and modernise its most critical asset. Instead, we are witnessing a dispersion of limited resources into multiple smaller projects whose cumulative impact is, at best, uncertain.

The issue, however, goes beyond aviation. It is about opportunity cost. Kenya today faces urgent and deeply felt challenges: a strained healthcare system, underfunded schools, impassable rural roads, and millions of young people locked out of meaningful employment. In many counties, farmers cannot get produce to markets because feeder roads are in disrepair.

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Small businesses struggle under the weight of high energy costs and limited access to credit. These are the real constraints on growth-constraints that no airport, however modern, can resolve.

There is also an uncomfortable political dimension to this wave of airport announcements. The geographic spread of proposed projects increasingly mirrors political tours and regional expectations rather than a coherent national infrastructure strategy.

Development risks being reduced to a checklist of visible projects rather than a carefully sequenced plan grounded in economic returns. Airports, in this context, become tools of political signalling impressive to announce, but not necessarily transformative in impact.

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A Case for Smarter Investment

To be clear, aviation infrastructure is important. But it must follow, not precede, economic development. Airports should serve thriving economies, not attempt to create them out of thin air.

Kenya’s real bottlenecks lie elsewhere in production, logistics, energy, and governance.

Until these are addressed, expanding airport infrastructure is unlikely to deliver the promised dividends.

At a time when public resources are stretched and debt pressures are mounting, the country cannot afford misplaced ambition.

What Kenya needs is not more runways, but more reason for planes to land, strong industries, efficient transport networks, and a population empowered to produce and trade. Anything less risks building the appearance of progress while leaving its substance behind.

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Dr. Luchetu Likaka PhD is a Distinguished Consultant Criminologist and Sociologist, boasting over 15 years of Experience in the Field. PHOTO/FILE.