Changing face of Kisumu city as posh villas dot lake shores, hills

An aerial view of Kisumu city. [File, Standard]

Kisumu suffers amid plenty and availability. This has been the cry of locals for decades as residents of Kenya’s third-largest city rely on what colonialists built for a population of 40,000 people at the beginning of the 19th century.

With the current population of 1.8 million people, residents require modern buildings to accommodate them.

When journalists asked former Transport Cabinet Secretary Michael Kamau why international flights were not being diverted to Kisumu yet there is an international airport there, the good CS retorted “Kisumu does not have good hotels, cottages and guest houses for the class of people embarking from the planes.

Was he right or it was just politics? Your guess is right. The fire had then razed part of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and international flights were being diverted to Mombasa and Eldoret. But things are different now with posh buildings dotting the lake’s shores, suburbs and hills such as Riat.

Riat Hills, renowned for its luxurious villas is for the Kisumu city’s wealthy.

For many years, it was like a ghost town with abandoned structures. “For a long time, Kisumu struggled to take its place among other leading towns like Nairobi and Mombasa in terms of real estate development,” says Charles Ayoro, the Managing Director of Real Estate Associates Ltd.

“This was due to poor infrastructure, poor housing, low businesses and slow economic growth and above all insecurity, so real estate development business could not take off on a high note.”

“Despite having acquired city status and being the third largest town in Kenya, the town’s economy could not take off despite many opportunities for the real estate sector,” said Anyoro.

Things took a positive move when the National Rainbow Coalition came to power.

The Kibaki administration built and upgraded Kisumu Airport to international status and built the Sondu Miriu hydroelectric power plant to supply Kisumu and the surrounding with constant electricity. It also improved the infrastructure.