It’s not only popes and presidents visiting Nairobi this year – growth in trade and industry is bringing in business travellers too, reports Jenny Southan

Security is tight as I arrive at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) – we are stopped at the gates while guards search the jeep, scan underneath it and ask who I am meeting.

After a couple of calls I am able to walk through the airport-style metal detector to the car park, where my contact is waiting.

Extra precautions are being taken as President Uhuru Kenyatta (son of former premier Jomo Kenyatta, after whom the centre is named) is paying a visit.

I’m here to interview Fred Simiyu, the KICC’s managing director, but am spontaneously whisked into one of the auditoriums to hear the president speak at the Forum for Young Women Entrepreneurs.

The room is bedecked in the red, black, white and green of the Kenyan flag, with many panelists in elegant co-ordinating power outfits.

“If you think you have an idea that you haven’t fully exploited that could be a business, there is no better time than today and no better enabling government – turn that passion into something,” says one. The room breaks into applause.

Next up is the president. “We will continue to do everything that we can to create an environment for women, for young people, for all Kenyans, to be able to achieve their dreams and their aspirations,” he says. “We can grow this country, we can grow this economy, and you are in the right place to do just that.”

OBAMA FEVER

The forum, which took place in July, is one of many business gatherings being hosted in Nairobi this year – in November, the city will welcome the World Public Relations Forum, and in December the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference.

In July, it held the China Trade Week Expo and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the latter of which made headlines worldwide when US President Barack Obama flew in to speak.

It was the first time a sitting US president had visited the country, and Obama proudly declared: “I’m the first Kenyan-American to be president of the United States.”

Addressing a 5,000-strong crowd, he warned that the country had to confront certain issues if it wanted to move forward – particularly gender equality, and the “cancer” of corruption that is costing the country 250,000 jobs a year.

“It’s an anchor that weighs you down and prevents you from achieving what you could,” he said.

HUSTLE AND BUSTLE

Nairobi is a complex city – and a highly congested one. One afternoon it takes me two and a half hours to travel less than 5km from Upper Hill to the Kempinski Villa Rosa hotel.

Without my laptop, I people-watch through the window. One woman fries fish at the side of the road, while another passes with a full bin liner knotted and balanced on her head as she texts on her phone with two hands. Men walk between cars selling oranges, magazines and cooking knives with flashing blades. Stalls hawk sugar cane, Tupperware and barbecued maize, while posters along walls read: “Call Dr Lulu for Love Potions, Business Boost, Man Power and Family Affairs.”

With a population of four million – about half of them living in slums – people know how to hustle. One of my guides, Antony Odhiambo from Gamewatchers Safaris, estimates that the average slum dweller earns KSh 4,000 (£25) a month.

Everywhere you go, traders are working at the side of the road – from furniture builders to plant sellers (Kenya supplies 35 per cent of cut flowers to the EU).

There’s wealth here, too. Odhiambo says: “You also have very rich people living in the slums. They were born there, then started a business and got rich but stayed because it was their home.”

In 2013, Capgemini’s World Wealth Report said that the number of dollar millionaires in Nairobi was expected to grow by 62 per cent from about 5,000 to more than 8,000 by 2020.

You only have to pass through the suburb of Karen to get a sense of how the other half live, in mansions behind walls fringed with barbed wire.

GOOD FOR GROWTH

According to Moses Ikiara, managing director of the Kenya Investment Authority, the country’s Vision 2030 development strategy “aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrialising, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens”.

It also wants to make sure no one is living below the poverty line, with the average income per Kenyan projected to be at least US$3,000 a year.

According to the World Bank, Kenya’s economic growth was 5.4 per cent last year – it is expected to hit 6 per cent this year and 6.6 per cent in 2016.

The country relies heavily on agriculture (27 per cent of GDP), but the export of textiles, coffee, tobacco, iron, steel, cement and petroleum products are also key contributors. Areas with high potential include real estate, transport services, ICT and energy.

Multinational companies with regional HQs in the capital include Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, General Motors, General Electric, IBM, Unilever and Vodafone, along with Google, which just announced it would be investing in Kenya’s US$700 million Lake Turkana Wind Power Project.

PwC and McKinsey opened offices in the Westlands district last year, while Wrigley is building a US$63 million factory in Machakos County, south-east of the city.

US expat Annie Roberts left the Boston Consulting Group to set up her own company here, Open Capital Advisors, in 2010. The idea was to help rapidly growing small- and medium-sized enterprises get funding between US$50,000 and US$5 million.

Her team has expanded from three staff to 36, she tells me, so it will shortly be relocating to bigger premises. “We also have a graduate recruitment programme – this time last year we had 600 applicants but could only hire six,” she said.

The main challenge Roberts has observed is finding senior-level talent. “It’s easy to fill junior positions but it is hard to find folks with five to 15 years of experience,” she says. “The returning diaspora have so many opportunities, they demand really high salaries.”

Although Open Capital Advisors is only able to work with 10 to 15 per cent of companies that would like its support, most of the ones it chooses are ethically minded.

Two of her favourite success stories are Honey Care Africa, which provides farmers with beehives, and Miliki Afya, which is bringing high-quality, low-cost health clinics to cities across Africa, India, Pakistan and (soon) Latin America.

What about tech start-ups? Roberts says: “Fundamentally, apps are amazing but there is still such a need for basic goods and services here – until recently, cardboard boxes had to be imported from the Middle East.”

Still, she adds: “I think we are going to see a rapid change in the next few years – the fact that smartphones have gone from US$900 to US$50 means that soon they will be available for US$20 and, as incomes go up, you are going to get to that sweet spot.”

Already on the case is Nairobi’s innovation lab, iHub – a hotspot for software developers and digital entrepreneurs. In July, the launch of IBM’s Innovation Space@iHub was announced at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit as a way to boost new tech ventures.

BARRIERS TO BUSINESS

It’s not all rosy. This year the World Bank ranked Kenya a lowly 136th out of 189 countries for ease of doing business.

Roberts says it took her a month to set up her company, which could have been worse, but “in Delaware you can set up a company in six hours”.

Finding reliable suppliers can also be tough and contracts aren’t always honoured. “With its colonial status, the legal system in Kenya looks similar to the UK but you are just never really sure what will be enforced,” she says.

Terrorism, sadly, has become an ongoing fear. Since the Westgate shopping mall attack by Somali militant group Al Shabaab in 2013, parts of Kenya and Nairobi have been on high alert, with travel advisories against all but essential travel by UK and US citizens.

In the capital, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office now only warns against going to the Eastleigh district, which has a large Somali population.

Most people on the ground are emphatic that it is no less safe than any other big city, although it’s better to use a hotel cab than hail a taxi or walk around at night. (You could also try Uber, which came online in January.)

Good news for business travellers is the growth in international hotels. “Last time we counted, we had more than 8,000 four- to five-star rooms,” the KICC’s Simiyu says.

Joining properties such as the Intercontinental, Hilton and Fairmont the Norfolk is the 200-room Villa Rosa Kempinski. Opened in 2013, it has one of Africa’s top presidential suites (Obama likely stayed here).

Other competitors include the five-year-old Sankara, which has 156 rooms, a pool, a champagne bar and a steakhouse, and the funky Dusit D2, which opened in March with 101 rooms.

Michael Metaxas, its general manager, says: “Development in Nairobi is booming. When I lived here 15 years ago you hardly saw anything more than one storey high. But now the horizon is impressive.”

A 271-room Radisson Blu will open next month with a large terrace and pool and a ballroom. “This will be our flagship property in Africa,” says general manager Jens Brandin.

Rezidor will add a Park Inn by Radisson in Westlands next March and a Radisson Residence in 2017. Marriott, Movenpick and Tune are also rumoured to arrive.

Needless to say, there will be plenty of options for Pope Francis to choose from when he arrives in November.

FLYING INTO NAIROBI

Kenya has changed its visa application process for UK and Irish citizens – previously you could queue up and pay for a tourist visa on arrival at the airport, but now you have to apply online in advance. A single-entry visa costs £30 and can take up to seven days to be issued.

East Africa’s regional hub, Jomo Kenyatta International (JKIA), is about 50 minutes’ drive from downtown, traffic permitting. Since the arrivals terminal caught fire in 2013, a temporary facility has been created in the ground level of the JKIA Parking Garage.

Kenya Airways’ Terminal 1A opened last year, and the new Chinese-made prefab Terminal 2, which has an annual passenger capacity of 2.5 million, was unveiled in May.

It is being used for international and domestic flights for about five to seven years until a bigger, better facility is opened. (Terminal 1D, which it replaced, is being revamped in the meantime.)

The largest terminal in Africa, T3, is set to be completed in 2018 with space for 20 million people a year (from 7.5 million today).

WILD AT HEART

It’s a unique feature of this city that you can, within minutes of leaving the airport, be driving through a wildlife reserve in the company of lions, ostrich and giraffe.

Set against a skyline of hazy blue towers, the 117 sq km Nairobi National Park is a tranquil stop-off for anyone with free time before or after meetings. You can either do a self-drive or guided tour (recommended) with Gamewatchers Safaris.

Arriving on a Sunday morning, I opt for an overnight stay in the reserve’s camp. There are nine well-appointed tents for guests with comfy king-size beds, electric lighting and zip-up en suite bathrooms. There are proper toilets, too, but if you want to have a shower you have to book a slot and staff will fill the tank outside with hot water.

It may be “glamping”, but finding myself in the middle of a forest immediately takes me out of my comfort zone, especially when I realise there is nothing to keep predators out.

I have only been there an hour when a troop of baboons come scampering by looking for food and manager Clemence has to chase them away. She then casually recalls the time that a pride of lions settled down outside her office for the day. Sitting around a campfire in the evening with a gin and tonic, though, I soon relax.

Out in the open, it doesn’t take long to spot animals – you can see the Big Four (lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino) but no elephants. There are also plenty of zebra, gazelle, vultures and waterbucks, as well as the odd hippo wallowing in a waterhole.

We also stop at the Ivory Burning Site to take in two large circular piles of ashes. In March, President Uhuru Kenyatta set fire to 14 tonnes of tusks here as a powerful anti-poaching message. The other mound is the remains of a burning from 1989 by then president Daniel arap Moi.

Unlike some other African countries, Kenya takes wildlife preservation seriously.

Entry to the park costs US$85. A full-board Gamewatchers package for one person including airport transfers, a shared game drive and drinks cost US$293 in October. porini.com