Kenya Airport Workers Vow Not to Back Down as Airport Comes to a Halt

After threatening to strike since early August, the union announced it would begin Wednesday at midnight. Moss Ndiema, secretary general of the union, said the government “has not been straightforward.” The deal was temporarily halted by Kenya’s high court on Monday, but there are suspicions it had been signed before. 

At the airport, workers chanted “Adani must go” and told OCCRP they would not back down. They were particularly concerned that the Adani deal would lead to job leases. “We are striking because the deal was only temporarily blocked,” Joseph Alfred, a security manager at the airport said. “We don’t want this takeover, we aren’t going anywhere.” 

The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) said “minimal operations” had picked up by 7am on Wednesday, but data from Flight Radar showed long delays and cancellations of flights both in and out of the airport.

OCCRP revealed the details of Adani Group’s proposal worth US$2.5 billion to lease Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) for 30 years on July 24. The proposal was accepted by the KAA, even after experts had advised the Kenyan government to put out a public tender to expand the airport. There had been no public hearings surrounding the proposal, which had been approved to a “development phase.” 

On August 30, Adani Enterprises set up a Kenyan subsidiary “Airports Infrastructure PLC (AIP)" according to a filing with the National Stock Exchange of India in Mumbai, seen by OCCRP. 

Meanwhile police were seen taking over airport operations on Wednesday. In a statement released on X, KAA said “a section of unionisable airport workers engaged in a strike” but the authority was “engaging relevant parties to normalize operations.” 

At 11am on Wednesday, airport union officials entered talks with the government but no resolution has yet been announced.