Donald Trump has scrapped the 60 million dollar MCC deal worth roughly KSh 7.7 billion that Kenya secured during Joe Biden’s tenure, effectively knocking the wind out of Nairobi’s long-delayed Bus Rapid Transit ambitions.
The programme, which had been hailed as a centrepiece of Kenya–US cooperation, was designed to overhaul the capital’s battered transport system. It had committed KSh 5.8 billion from the US and KSh 1.56 billion from Kenya to modernise mobility, expand pedestrian and cycling networks and support the transition to climate-friendly buses.
Treasury records now show the MCC Threshold Programme is being formally wound up, and Nairobi has already received official notice from Washington. The deal was signed in September 2023 during President William Ruto’s US visit and activated in May 2024 after his White House meeting with Biden.
Back then MCC touted the project as its biggest and most ambitious threshold programme yet. It was meant to run until 2027 and benefit more than four million Nairobi residents through safer transit, better land-use planning and improved infrastructure for women and other vulnerable commuters.
All that has now been swept aside. The collapse of the agreement further delays a BRT network already limping due to funding shortages. Contractors have struggled to keep up work on the city’s five planned lines, which were expected to feature modern stations, footbridges, surveillance systems and EV charging depots.
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With the MCC money gone, Kenya faces an even larger financing gap at a time when gridlock continues to choke Nairobi’s economy and daily life. The government must now hunt for alternative investors or accept that the capital’s most ambitious transport reform may continue to gather dust.
There is, at least, a faint pulse. In December 2024 Nairobi governor Johnson Sakaja revealed that the city had secured KSh 40 billion in financing from the European Investment Bank, the French Development Agency and the European Union to construct the Clean Core BRT Line 3. The first stretch will run from Dandora to Kenyatta National Hospital, with later extensions linking Tala, Ngong and KNH to create a central artery in the city’s wider mobility plan.
The new funding keeps a slice of Nairobi’s urban transport hopes alive, though the loss of the MCC programme remains a heavy blow to the broader vision.
