Why has Mombasa failed to achieve?

Considering its advantages – a well-endowed hinterland, East Africa’s best natural harbour, multiple tourist attractions and a variety of international and national transport links  – Kenya’s second city should be prosperous. Why has it not realised its potential for trade or industrial development?

Areport from the University of Birmingham in the UK seeks to understand thereasons for Mombasa’s poor economic performance.

WhenKenya achieved independence, Mombasa – gateway for goods to and fromhighland Kenya, the Great Lakes region and southern Sudan – had bright prospects.However, prolonged insecurity in neighbouring states and decline in Kenyanagricultural exports caused commercial traffic through the port of Mombasa to stagnate. The amount ofcargo handled in 1981 was not reached again until 1996. Like other East African ports, Mombasa has high costs, lowproductivity and a poor record of maintenance and investment.

Japaneseinvestment in Mombasa International Airport enabled a growth in touristarrivals in the late 1990s but the airport’s capacity exceeds its current use. Highlevels of crime and poor infrastructure deter tourists and investors. Most ofthe money spent by tourists goes abroad. Almost all the major hotels, as wellas commercial and sport fishing enterprises, are partly or wholly owned bynon-Kenyans. Tourism and fishing in coastal waters are threatened byenvironmental degradation.

Privatisationand import liberalisation have led to reduced employment in the formal economy.Mombasa has a diverse informalsector, but microenterprises are constrained byinsufficient capital, lack of demand, difficulty accessing land, and harassmentby police and municipal authorities.

Smallholderfarming in the region suffers from insecure tenure, absentee land ownership,poor soils and lack of access to capital and technology. Many farmers are onlypoorly integrated into local markets. Mombasa and nearby coastal touristresorts mostly source food from elsewhere in Kenya.

Findingsinclude:

• Mombasa’s economy continues to bedominated, as it was under colonialism, by an Arab, Asian and European elite: manywage jobs are taken by migrants from Kenya’s interior and people ofcoastal origin often depend on unskilled casual work
• State-controlled enterprises providing water, power andtelecommunications are weakened by bad management and corruption.
• The Mombasa municipality has no securetax base and has been close to insolvency, slightly improved recently by annualfinancial transfers from central government.
• Politics is perceived as a route to personal enrichment.
• The municipality has little autonomy and central government controlreduces local capacity.
• Insecurity, crime and ethnic and class-based rivalries discourageinvestment.

Thehigh levels of trust and alliances between groups, which are considered to be key to local economic development, can only be developed in Mombasa if:

• politicians stop consolidating power by means of patronage, intimidationand appeal to ethnic loyalties and fears
• transfers of funds from the centre are maintained, but the municipality’sautonomy is safeguarded and its capacity to raise revenue and plan its ownfuture development increased
• equal access to economic opportunities between up-country migrants andpeople of coastal origin is ensured
• the establishment of a local institution of higher education isencouraged by central government
• regional politicians can develop their own local powerbases, instead of being clients of national decision-makers.