The need for streetlights in the Nairobi roads

One of my mom’s favorite songs is a Gospel song by Bahati Bukuku known as Kampeni. In this song, she narrates the tale of a man known as Mzee Tupa Tupa who, after a night out of drinking, is casually crossing the road when he sees a single headlight approach from a distance. Thinking that it’s a motorbike, he stands his ground at the middle of the road, oblivious of some remarks by some boys on the side of the road. Within no time, the single headlight gets to him, only for him to realize that it was actually a lorry with a faulty headlight and one working headlight. But it is too late, so the lorry hits him, and he dies.

For comical purposes, you can check out the video of the song on YouTube. One thing you’ll notice is that the particular road which Mzee Tupa Tupa was crossing has no streetlights. Blame may be put on him for failing to cross the road in a hurry, but then, the accident would definitely have been avoided if the road had streetlights, since the driver of the lorry would have also seen Mzee Tupa Tupa from a distance and slowed down.

Well, taking a look at the roads around our Nairobi at night, it seems like the Road Authorities want us to be Mzee Tupa Tupas in our own right. I’ve tried crossing Kangundo Road at night and it felt like Moses crossing the Red Sea, because you never know when your luck may run out and the danger hit you. For a road that serves a huge populace, it’s such a shame to lack streetlights.

The other night, I was leaving Rongai, while heading to Galleria, and as we passed through Magadi Road, I couldn’t fail but notice that, despite being a major artery to the city in general, and also having so many meanders, the road has not even a single streetlight. Not even one. Nada. And you wonder how pedestrians are supposed to walk around at night.

From Galleria, if you decide to head over to Karen, you’ll notice that there aren’t streetlights along Lang’ata Road all the way to the junction with Ngong Road at The Hub. Mind you, the pedestrian sidewalk wasn’t completely made, so, if you don’t use a torch, you might lose a toe, break your knee, or find yourself inside a pit. 

Now, morning and evening runs are taken to be a middle-class thing, and for that reason, you’d expect the leafy suburbs to be well serviced to accommodate that. However, take a walk to Arboretum Drive at night and you’ll be surprised. The whole stretch from State House Girls to the junction with Ring Road Kileleshwa only has 2 streetlights: one at the middle and the other at the end. Besides that, the sidewalk keeps changing sides, and with no light, you might also fall into a ditch. It’s a real hustle.

By this point, I hope we agree on the incompetence by our road authorities, and for that, we have to remember that the most notable initiative to install streetlights in Nairobi came not from them, but from a private individual, that is, Esther Passaris, back in 2002. Esther Passaris birthed the ‘Adopt-A-Light’ initiative, where she was able to install and maintain streetlights using funds obtained from advertising revenue on those same streetlights.

By 2009, her firm had installed around 3,000 streetlights along 50 streets, covering about 150km of road. Thanks to her, then, Nairobi was able to get lit. But not for long, for the Nairobi City Council waged war on her business.

Well, now that this showed how rough the environment is for a private investor in road utilities, then KeNHA and KURA should step in themselves and install streetlights along every major road, in order to ensure that we are all safe when moving around at night. Otherwise, we don’t want to be the next Mzee Tupa Tupas.