@wanyee. As long as Konza city continues to use tax payer money into the white elephant, i will always have a problem with it. They should find a way to tap into investors who support them and return tax payer money used in purchase of land and paying consultants back to treasury. This way, those of us who see it as an investment can sink in their money.
Konza is 60km from Nairobi. Kajiado, machakos and chumvi towns are also roughly more or less the same distances. these towns already have basic infrastructure hence lower cost of set up.
Why would someone want to go all the way to Koza to set up?
This here can provide reason why.
http://www.the-star.co.k...ama-quizzed-over-malili
Buying the land using tax payer money opend up channels for corruption.
Compare this to Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua giving even better land for free to investors.
Governor Mutua could have taken advantage of this and also created a chanel for looting but he did not.
http://diasporamessenger...-investor-alfred-mutua/
After the land transaction deal, more tax payer money is to be used to advertise and hype the project.
Once the value goes higher, there could be chances of under the table dealings as AG Githu Muigai brought out here, whereby Ndemo opted to resign rather than comply.
AG Githu insisted on competitive bidding of land allocation as opposed to negotiations.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201201091213.html
After this is through, World Bank will overburden tax payers with billions of loans on an unfeasible project, crippling the economy further with a kes 700 billion debt.
http://www.technologyafrica.co.ke/index2.html
On a smaller note, our tax payer money will go into paying American and British consultants millions of shillings for what any random Kenyan architect can offer for between 50 to 100k.
http://www.businessdaily.../-/10v57bd/-/index.html
These renderings here done by American architects can be done for as low as 50k by talented Kenyans.
For Konza city World-bank planners to even imagine that Konza will attract such highrise structures is an insult to the architecture and planning profession.
Such buildings will cost a minimum of kes 100 per sq foot to rent and a minimum of kes 14,000 per sq foot to buy. Any investor coughing up such an amount in an area where there are vast grasslands will be impossible to find. High rents and costs of offices go hand in hand with value addition e.g proximity to other offices eg upper hill. The further you move away from convenience, the lower the cost of land. With such low land costs, its unfeasible to construct vertically upwards since its just easier and cheaper to acquire more horizontal land and build ground floor only buildings.
As Iron Sharpens Iron, So one Man Sharpens Another.