IN SHORT: Kenya signed a Ksh154.2 billion ($1.2 billion) contract with China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) on June 23 to modernise Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, following the earlier appointment of TDB and AFC as financing arrangers. The contract was signed by Aviation and Aerospace Development Principal Secretary Teresia Mbaika and CRBC General Manager Yu Xiaodong, witnessed by Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir. The 36-month project will nearly triple JKIA’s capacity from 7.5 million to 22 million passengers, build a new terminal, and increase aircraft handling from 25 to 31 arrivals per hour. The government will borrow up to Ksh100 billion and inject Ksh50 billion in equity. The signing came days after the High Court certified a constitutional petition by the Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) challenging the project’s transparency as urgent.
Kenya has awarded its most significant aviation infrastructure contract in a generation to China Road and Bridge Corporation, the same state-owned contractor that built the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway and the Nairobi Expressway, signing a Ksh154.2 billion deal on June 23 to rebuild Jomo Kenyatta International Airport even as a High Court challenge over the procurement’s transparency proceeds toward a hearing. The contract award moves the JKIA modernisation from financing structure to execution, with CRBC now mandated to deliver a near-tripling of the airport’s capacity over 36 months.
- The contract scope is comprehensive: construction of a new terminal building and supporting facilities, modernisation and upgrading of existing infrastructure, improvement of airside and landside operations, and enhancement of overall operational efficiency. The project will raise JKIA’s annual passenger capacity from 7.5 million to 22 million, and will increase the airport’s aircraft handling capacity from 25 to 31 arrivals per hour. JKIA handled approximately 9 million passengers in 2025, already exceeding its 7.5 million design capacity, making the expansion operationally urgent.
- The financing structure combines debt and equity: the government will borrow up to Ksh100 billion and inject an additional Ksh50 billion in equity through the Kenya Airports Authority. This structure follows the earlier appointment of the Trade and Development Bank and Africa Finance Corporation as lead arrangers, using airport revenues as the financing anchor. Finance Minister Mbadi has insisted the expansion imposes no strain on sovereign debt, structuring it around the airport’s own revenue streams rather than the sovereign balance sheet.
- The CRBC selection carries significant weight given the contractor’s deep embedding in Kenyan infrastructure. CRBC and its parent China Communications Construction Company built the SGR, the Nairobi Expressway and the Talanta Stadium, and broke ground in March 2026 on the Ksh549 billion Naivasha-Kisumu-Malaba SGR extension. This makes CRBC one of the most deeply embedded foreign contractors in Kenya’s public infrastructure, a relationship that offers execution reliability but also raises questions about the concentration of strategic infrastructure delivery in a single foreign state-owned entity.
- The legal cloud is significant. The High Court, in directions issued on June 19 by Justice Gregory Mutai, certified a constitutional petition filed by the Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) as urgent and raising significant public importance. COFEK is seeking conservatory orders to halt the project pending a full hearing, arguing that critical information about the financing structure, contractual obligations, beneficial ownership and the identities of the firms involved has not been made public, raising constitutional concerns over accountability and access to information.
- The government’s response to the legal challenge has been to proceed while defending the procurement’s integrity. Chirchir maintained that the procurement complied with all applicable laws and regulations, that the process had been underway for three months following the JKIA Master Plan completion in February 2026, and that more than 40 firms participated in an April pre-bid conference with all submissions evaluated on technical and financial merit. The tension between proceeding with signing and the pending court challenge is the central governance question surrounding the project.
- The JKIA project carries the weight of Kenya’s post-Adani infrastructure credibility. The original Adani deal was cancelled by President Ruto in November 2024 after the group’s founder was indicted on US fraud charges. The transition from that cancelled concession to a signed CRBC contract, arranged through African DFIs and executed by a Chinese state contractor, represents Kenya’s attempt to deliver the expansion its aviation ambitions require while managing the transparency and financing controversies that have surrounded the project for two years.
East Africa’s aviation competition gives the CRBC contract urgency that overrides some of the transparency concerns in the government’s calculus. Ethiopia is developing a massive new airport in Bishoftu designed to eventually handle over 100 million passengers annually. Rwanda is building Bugesera International Airport with Qatar Airways backing. Uganda is expanding Entebbe and Arua. JKIA, operating over capacity, risks losing its East African hub status if the expansion is delayed further by legal challenges. The government’s decision to sign despite the pending court case reflects that competitive pressure.
The Bigger Picture: The JKIA contract crystallises the central tension in African infrastructure development between speed and scrutiny. Kenya needs the expansion urgently to defend JKIA’s hub status against aggressive Ethiopian and Rwandan competition. The financing has been structured carefully through African DFIs to protect the sovereign balance sheet. But the transparency concerns raised by COFEK and certified as significant by the High Court are not trivial: they go to the heart of whether Kenya has learned the governance lessons from the Adani debacle or merely replaced one opaque deal with another. The airport will get built. Whether it gets built in a way that survives constitutional scrutiny and public confidence is the question the courts will now answer.
Source: The Standard, June 23 2026 / Kenyans.co.ke, June 23 2026 / Aviation Week, June 24 2026
