One of the best examples of businesses that have thrived from inefficiencies in Kenya have to be the conspicuously blue tankers lately now being spotted in upmarket estates too unfortunately. 'Clean water tankers'. If you are a Nairobi City resident and you live in a an appartment that is supplied by City County water, and your landlord/caretaker/agent orders for a 'Clean water Tanker' to come refill your apartment tank when your taps run dry, know you are well taken care off. There are estates where you will have to figure out where you will get the water from, usually from cart water vendors. If you live in apartment with borehole water, that was the best decision you made in your rental house hunt.
The water supply inefficiencies have been an inconvinence many residents have had to live with. For a heavily taxed citizenship, you would imagine that the water supply system would be a bit more reliable in the city. Not so much. No one complains about water supply anymore in Nairobi for both homes and offices. Households and offices alike have found and settled on the saviour blue tankers alternative, while Landlords who can afford it, have promptly dug up boreholes to retain residential and office tenants. Is there hope for a resolution soon? Who knows? I doubt anyone is following up or even petitioning for it.
In the meantime, one of the top seller features of rental houses in the last couple of years has been 'borehole available', because of the scarcity of water in most of Nairobi estates. Then there are landlords that have not invested in boreholes and this is where 'Clean water tankers' come in. The tankers buy their water from now strategically placed boreholes that price water per litre and thereafter the tankers place their markup and sell water to homeowners with no water connection or boreholes and apartments and business premises with no water supply from the existing county infrastructure.
The most interesting thing is, while our leading businesses born out of inefficiencies are clean water tankers, Nigeria's businesses born out of inefficiencies are generator business. Nigeria has large oil, gas, hydro and solar resources, and it already has the capacity to produce over 12,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power from existing plants yet, due to inadequate infrastructure, and problems associated with gas supply and water shortages, only approximately 4,000 MW reaches the national grid, quite insufficient for the country's population. This therefore led to an influx of low cost domestic generators to provide power supply for Nigerian households and businesses alike.
As in many African countries, citizens have to sometimes to look for a workaround for their problems. As Kenya adopts boreholes and clean water tanks for their own water supply (which is still out of reach for many homeowners and landlords), Nigerian's are now embracing solar power which is definetly a cleaner and (probably cheaper) alternative to generators that are a great contributor to air polution, even as their government puts in place measures to increase capacity and infrastructure for electicity production.
Despite our current inefficiencies, every Kenyan should be grateful for two key things though; Electricity and Internet. We have come a long way.
