With a wad of notes in one hand and pointing some curtains to a customer with the other hand clasping an IPhone, businessman Aaden Abdurahim complained of how business was slow.
“Come after 30 minutes and pick your curtains,” he told the customer, almost shouting in an effort to rise above the noise of hundreds of sewing machines.
“On other days, I would have told you to come tomorrow but today is a slow day. You are lucky you came on a Monday,” he said before turning his attention to the next one in line.
At his shop on the ground floor of the Bangkok Mall where every stall interestingly sells curtains, you select the material you want and a tailor customises it for you in a matter of hours at half the price it would cost you in Nairobi’s CBD.
Business in Eastleigh is booming. The malls are full again and hawkers that used to clog the road are all gone courtesy of a strike by traders last year. Many residents cannot even remember the last time there was a terror attack in Eastleigh. They do not even want to talk about it.
Economic weight
“First of all, we have never been a terrorist’s haven. That is a wrong notion and I demand you apoligise,” Eastleigh District Business Association chair Ibrahim Hussein demands when asked how the area has managed to rise above the ashes.
A swoop by the government targeting migrants in 2014 left Eastleigh almost crushed, leading to tensions. Today, Little Mogadishu, as it is described from time to time, has not only made a comeback but its economic weight is felt not only in Nairobi but across the region.
Eastleigh has not always been the nerve centre of business in East Africa’s largest economy, its current status is a large variation from what it originally set out to be.
According to Nairobi City Council records, Eastleigh acquired its name in 1921 when it was made a township by the colonial administration. The estate was earmarked for Asians and elite Africans who were clerks, builders or shoemakers.
It is difficult to know the value of money that exchanges hands here on a daily basis, but the Eastleigh Business Community puts it at Sh2 billion, almost a third of the capital’s total daily economic output.
“Actually, it has become the second economic hub after the CBD in Nairobi's current zoning system, after overtaking Westlands,” says Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.
“In terms of trade volumes, Eastleigh is giving the city centre a run for its money,” says Sonko.
So big has been the transformation of Eastleigh that British anthropologist Neil Carrier last year wrote a whole book about how the war in Somalia had led to the creation of one of the region’s biggest economic hubs.
“Eastleigh’s enormous success in becoming one of Kenya’s leading commercial hubs, as well as one of the country’s most dynamic and culturally diverse urban neighbourhoods, is a tribute to the energy, hard work and investments of those that have made it their home,” he said.
There is no exact record of how many shopping malls currently operate in Eastleigh. Internet search engine, Google Places, lists 24 but the number could be higher since in Eastleigh, malls are not glossy retail outlets for global brands, movie theatres or eateries.
Here, hundreds of small stalls run by individual shopkeepers housed in low rise shopping malls named Olympic, London, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Miski or Emirates are testament to how distinctively global Eastleigh has become.
“Eastleigh is right now probably the best example there is in the world of low end globalisation,” says Prof Samuel Nyandemo of the University of Nairobi’s School of Economics.
“Where you cannot get a loan from a financial institution, in Eastleigh you can easily borrow the money to inject in your business from another person. This employment of socialism also applies in the sourcing of goods,” he says.
The goods are bought in bulk from far flung sources, mostly China and Dubai then flown to Eldoret International Airport or landed at the Mombasa port. They are then trucked to Eastleigh, where individual retailers or wholesalers pick them up for sale.
The wholesalers then either sell them within the numerous stalls in Eastleigh, where similar goods are clustered in individual malls or sell them to traders from the CBD and counties up country.
