Namwamba: State seeking Safari Rally deal beyond 2026

The government is committed to having the Safari Rally in the World Rally Championship Series longer, Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba has said.

Speaking yesterday during the Senate’s Plenary Session while explaining the expenditure of this year’s event, Namwamba said in his opening remarks that the government is negotiating with the FIA and WRC Promoter to extend the current contract, which expires in 2026 by another three years.

“The Safari Rally markets the country incredibly. The last Safari Rally was the most watched of the 13 series in the WRC. It markets the country and definitely has incredible benefits in terms of pulling in investment and tourism, branding the country to that international audience,” Namwamba said.

Responding to questions from Kisii Senator Richard Onyonka regarding the breakdown of funds utilisation in this year’s edition of the Safari Rally, Namwamba said a final report will be released after his ministry  has scrutinised the preliminary report from the event’s secretariat.

“The WRC Safari Rally is a special project established by Gazette notice. The 2023 budget for the WRC Safari Rally was Sh1,486,369,782 broken down as follows; The Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund was to provide Sh1,341,369,782, sponsorship from the Kenya Commercial Bank was Sh100 million, and TV licenses amounted to Sh45 million,” Namwamba said.

“It is important for this honourable house to note that the 2022 budget for the previous year for this event was Sh2.5 billion, and we made effort right from the outset when we took office to cut down this budget significantly.  We reduced the budget by close to Sh1.1 billion from Sh2.5 billion to 1.486 billion,” Namwamba, accompanied Principal Secretary Peter Tum and WRC Safari Rally Project CEO Phineas Kimathi, said.

“The preliminary report from the WRC Safari Rally project secretariat indicates that the 2023 budget of Sh1.48 billion was utilised as follows and I have provided a summary table where we spent Sh487,400,200 on the WRC Promoter. Normally you pay a subscription fee to the Promoter and so from that budget 487,400,200 was wired direct to the Promoter.”

He added that the Steering, Organising committees, and the secretariat utilised Sh222,810,692. The budget for event hosting was Sh770,359,090.

“The same preliminary report from the WRC Safari Rally Project secretariat indicates that there was an over-expenditure of Sh272,288,582. The report indicates that there are pending bills totalling to Sh338,762,380.

“Pending bills is a challenge and I want to indicate to this house the pending bill that we have received as a report from the project are not confirmed yet. We are subjecting that report to internal verification and assessment.

“We will only commit public resources to what is verified and what is authentic because, on transparency and accountability, there is no compromise. We are exercising zero tolerance to misuse of public resources.”