Nairobi’s Infrastructure A Bet For Investment Opportunities

Cytonn Real Estate, the development affiliate of Cytonn Investments, has released its topical on Infrastructure in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area (NMA).

The report highlights the state of infrastructure in the NMA, with a major focus on roads, water, and sewer coverage, NMA infrastructural projects, the importance of infrastructure, as well as identifying the potential areas for Real Estate investment.

Nairobi Metropolitan Area (NMA) currently has a total of 940.5 Km of ongoing construction and rehabilitation road projects valued at Kshs 97.3 bn, whereas 132.8 Km of road projects worth Kshs 93.1 bn have been completed so far between January 2021 and May 2022.

Key to note is that the completed projects are more costly compared to the projects in the pipeline which have long distances, as a result of the Nairobi Expressway project which cost Kshs 88.0 bn yet just 27.1 Km.

Below is a summary of completed and ongoing road network coverage in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area (NMA) between January 2021 and May 2022:

Both water and sewer connectivity increased by 1.0% points to 55.8% and 19.0% in 2020, from 54.8% and 18.0% in 2019, respectively, in the NMA. The table below shows the water and sewer coverage of various counties within the NMA as of 2020;

To gauge Real Estate investment opportunities based on infrastructure, we looked at the key infrastructural sectors and ranked them in terms of performance and availability as follows;

Based on the above infrastructure services, Nairobi tops as the best County for Real Estate developments such as the residential units, due to the presence of adequate completed road networks, and, adequate water and sewer connectivity.

Some of the areas to invest in Nairobi County due to the presence of adequate infrastructure include; Kilimani, Westlands, Upperhill, Gigiri, and Karen, among many others.

Kiambu County follows closely in terms of infrastructure availability, with some of the best areas to implement Real Estate investments being; Ruiru, Kahawa Sukari, Juja, and, Thika, among others.