Action beyond the ballot: We must rethink, retool Nairobi for the future

By any measure, Nairobi is an extraordinary city. It is the socio-economic and political capital of Kenya, the innovation centre of East Africa and the only city in the Global South to host two major UN agencies: the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN-Habitat.

Yet Nairobi is still administered like other counties, whose governance scope is comparatively local. It is this contradiction that breeds and feeds the city's chronic dysfunction.

Nairobi does not only serve Nairobians or Kenyans. Its infrastructure has both national and international significance. When waste management fails in Nairobi, it has terrible diplomatic consequences.

Traffic jams slow the economy and rising insecurity tarnishes Kenya’s global image. When Nairobi sneezes, the whole country catches a cold.

Capitals around the world are governed distinctly for good reason. Washington, D.C., for example, operates under federal authority. Canberra, meanwhile, is constituted as a federal territory. Closer home, Abuja is overseen directly by Nigeria’s federal government. The principle is simple: a capital city is an key national asset.

At every election, the question of Nairobi’s future as a metropolitan area flares up. Citizens and some leaders, frustrated by poor sanitation, sprawling informal settlements and fragmented planning, speak out, but the debate fizzles out and the city ends up in the same familiar mess, only bigger and more tangled.

For posterity, Nairobi should be restructured as a metropolitan area administered by the national government through a professional metropolitan authority, insulating it from local political turbulence, manipulative syndicates and rogue cartels.

As well as accounting for a disproportionate share of Kenya’s tax revenue, it acts as a symbol of national unity, bringing together people from all backgrounds. Ensuring its functionality and well-being is not a local issue, but an expression of macroeconomic policy on a much larger scale.

The national government has already intervened when the capital deteriorates, as seen during the NMS era. Let's formalise this reality.

A metropolitan authority run under national oversight would enable long-term infrastructural and economic planning beyond electoral cycles. It would harmonize transport, urban planning, orderliness and land policy across Nairobi.

Additionally, it would integrate policing, transport regulation, and environmental management under a unified structure. Further, the authority would efficiently streamline coordination between national security organs and urban administration as cogs of the same wheel.
Yes, transforming Nairobi into a nationally administered metropolis would require constitutional amendment.

But even so, constitutional reform is not sacrilege. The constitution is a living document designed to respond to evolving realities. If Nairobi’s scale, complexity, and strategic importance exceeds normal county capacity, reform, therefore, would not be betrayal but maturity. Responding to Nairobi’s uniqueness would not undermine devolution or diminish other counties in any way.

It would embody realistic governance needs, and the ultimate value exceeds the cost.

The debate is neither about disenfranchisement nor stripping Nairobians of representation. It is about creating a governance model that matches Nairobi’s prominence at the national and international scale. A functional, efficient, technocratic and accountable city shielded from narrow political theatrics and parochial mentalities. Nairobi is Kenya’s diplomatic hub, economic engine and face to the world.

If we truly recognize its strategic importance and appreciate the metropolis it has become, then we must be bold enough to design a system that reflects that reality.

The writer is a psychologist.