The Standard has obtained a 390-page contract for the Bomas International Convention Complex that Parliament spent months trying to force into the open.
For months, legislators demanded the documents governing the multi-billion-shilling construction and equipping of the Bomas International Convention Complex. The Ministry of Defence, which took over the project from the former Ministry of Gender, Culture and Heritage, refused. Officials cited commercial confidentiality and national security.
The contract remained locked away even as the project’s reported cost climbed from an initial KSh 31.7 billion to KSh 45.1 billion.
The Standard has now secured and photographed a full copy of the agreement. It bears the official stamp of the Kenya Defence Forces. The document runs to 390 pages and records a contract signed on 18 March 2025 with China Road and Bridge Corporation for roughly KSh 41.9 billion (US$324 million). Construction began the same month under Defence Ministry supervision through the KDF.
By mid-2026 the works stood at about 38 percent complete, with the timeline later pushed to the end of December 2026.
What the contract shows is a series of additions that sit outside the core construction costs. “Add sums” total about KSh 2.57 billion: 3 percent for design (KSh 856.8 million), 1 percent for security (KSh 285.6 million) and a 5 percent provisional sum (KSh 1.42 billion). None of these line items is tied to steel, concrete, labour or equipment.
Procurement specialists who have reviewed similar structures describe such percentages as potential vehicles for payments that never appear in bills of quantities.
A further KSh 4.97 billion is listed as a flat provision for import taxes, without reference to actual customs assessments. Another KSh 3.56 billion is allocated to presidential-area fit-out. A smaller but still notable KSh 18.1 million is set aside for termite prevention.
The Auditor-General has separately recorded that direct procurement was approved on 17 February 2025 while a tender process was still under way.
The institutional arrangement itself has drawn repeated questions. The Ministry of Tourism owns the facility and oversees its funding and marketing as a major conference venue. Defence holds the contract, the procurement records and technical supervision.
Tourism Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Miano told a Senate committee in September that her ministry did not have custody of the principal documents and would have to request them from Defence. Senators, led by the Roads, Transportation and Housing Committee, had already demanded the full set of contracts, financing agreements, invoices, bills of quantities and variation records.
The first tender for the complex had been awarded in November 2023 to a Turkish firm at roughly KSh 31.6 billion. That award was later terminated. The Public Procurement Administrative Review Board found the termination irregular.
The current contract with the Chinese contractor followed.
The complex is planned as an 11,000-delegate facility with a 5,000-seat main hall, a large auditorium, banquet space, dozens of meeting rooms and a presidential pavilion. It is intended to strengthen Nairobi’s position as a meetings and events destination.
Public money is committed through the Tourism Fund and related arrangements. Taxpayers therefore have a direct interest in the terms under which the money is spent.
The Ministry of Defence has maintained that commercial confidentiality and security considerations justified withholding the contract from open scrutiny.
The document now in public view allows those claims to be tested against the actual clauses. Parliament’s repeated requests for the papers went unanswered for months.
The contract is no longer secret. The questions it raises about cost structure, procurement process and accountability remain.
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