Kenya’s Construction Industry to  Grow at 4.5 per cent in 2021

Kenya’s construction industry is expected to grow at 4.5 per cent according to a report by the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) released on Tuesday. 

The report, Status of the Built Environment covering the period January-June 2021, says the recovery is attributed to the easing of COVID-19 related restrictions.

 In the medium term, AAK projects a gradual acceleration of growth, supported by a number of large-scale roads and related infrastructure projects, for which construction is likely to begin in 2022.

“While this puts Kenya in line with the 2021 Sub-Saharan African average of 4.4 per cent for construction industry growth, the country will not be able to recover its pre-Covid-19 growth rate,” it unfortunately says.

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) says the country’s economy contracted by 1.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2020 compared to 5.8 per cent growth over the same period in 2019.

The construction industry contributed 5.6 per cent to GDP in 2019 and provided employment to almost 222,000 people. 

‘‘In the medium term, we project a gradual acceleration of growth, supported by a number of large-scale road and related infrastructure projects, for which construction is likely to begin in 2022 and which will inject renewed momentum in the Kenyan transport infrastructure sector following the end of works on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project in 2020,” said AAK President Wilson Mugambi.

“Nonetheless, a gradual shift towards more financially sustainable infrastructure projects, contrasting with expensive bilateral debt-funded projects, such as the SGR, will put downward pressure on long-term growth rates.’’