Kaaya is gone: What next for his multimillion dollar AICC plans?

Arusha. Elishilia Kaaya, managing director of the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC), is dead, gone. What about his multimillion dollar plans?

The technocrat, who headed the conference facility for a record 16 years, passed away on Friday at an Arusha hospital, sending shock waves through the regional safari-cum-tourism hub.

He was at the helm of AICC at the best times, when Arusha hosted numerous high-profile meetings, before bookings dropped sharply after the coronavurus epidemic outbreak.

The late Kaaya, who died at the age of 59 years, took advantage of international meetings in particular to tap Tanzania’s potential in convention tourism.

He was appointed by President Jakaya Kikwete as the AICC managing director in early 2007 after having served in the same capacity in an acting basis for a year.

He was not entirely new to the landmark structure in Arusha that was purposely created by the government in 1978 to “bring the world to Tanzania”.

The accomplished accountant/auditor rose from the ranks after joining the institution in the early 1990s and for a long time was in charge of internal audit unit.

Those were years AICC minted the needed cash for the economy from increased conferences and occupancy of its office block and 650 residential flats.

The economy had opened up to the private sector while tourism was booming with Arusha, and the northern zone in particular, getting higher stakes.

But it was the entry of two organizations that radically changed the fortunes of AICC, a parastatal like any other, but which does not get subsidy from the state coffers.

These were the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the East African Community (EAC) and affiliated institutions for the latter.

In a span of months, the 23,000 square metre AICC office block in the heart of Arusha was nearly fully occupied, more than a half by the UN Tribunal.

Apparently, full occupancy of the landmark office block and residential houses and continuous bookings of the conference halls overwhelmed the facility.

This was particularly so between 2002 to 2014 when Arusha overtook other conference centres with the EAC region and beyond in hosting major meetings.

Chief among them were the Sullivan Summit, organized by US based activists in 2008 and African Travel Agency (ATA), another US based organisation, also in 2008.

This was capped with the African Development Bank (AfDB) biannual conference in 2012 and a host of EAC Heads of State Summits or EAC-sponsored meetings.

Increased bookings at the meeting halls, at the time when the hotel sector had not reached the current stage, meant the AICC needed more such facilities.

It was at this juncture that Mr Kaaya, a CEO trained at the famous Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands, came with an idea on how to circumvent the challenge.

He proposed construction of an additional and much larger conference facility in Arusha to be known as ‘Mt Kilimanjaro International Convention Centre’ (MK-ICC).

Top notch consultants were hired from the University of Dar es Salaam to work on the massive project that was estimated to cost a whooping $206 million.

A 23-acre plot was secured at Themi along Njiro Road south east of Arusha for the proposed facility that was to include shopping malls, a hostel and eating joints. The new convention centre was conceived way back in 2008. By the time Mr Kaaya passed on last week, there is no sign of any development at the site.

However, even as late as 2019, he kept on defending the project which he believed can meet the different needs of the delegates and tourists and locals on leisure.

He repeatedly insisted that implementation of the multimillion dollar project was not entirely his ‘dream’ but had full blessings of the government.

It was evident, though, that MK-ICC would have to wait much longer as the conference/tourism industry, locally and globally, grappled with new challenges.

While the new convention centre remained on cards, the late MD came up with another business idea in 2012; construction of a shopping mall.

The outfit was planned to be put up at Kaloleni suburb not far from the main bus terminal and where AICC had some old residential buildings since the 1970s.

The project got the blessings of the board - and 72 living quarters in 18 blocks were pulled down to pave the way for construction of the mall, then in high demand.

This was to be a joint project between AICC and the now defunct Local Authority Pensions Fund (LAPF).

Again the project at the famous Soweto suburb - and which was to cover 7,000 square metres - has not taken off; nor have there been any signs of civil works in progress.

Although, there has not been any official word on this, current trends in the industry are enough to tell why the proposed mall would take much longer to build.

That did not discourage the late Kaaya. He would not let AICC lose revenues from conference organizers for lack of exhibition halls.

About six years ago, he pushed the management and board to endorse plans for the construction of an exhibition facility on AICC’s park yard.

The idea sailed through smoothly and the Sh2.8 billion Lake Nyasa Exhibition Hall was built and opened for business in July 2017.

For years, the late MD had great ideas on how AICC can construct mini-conference facilities in major towns and cities across the country to promote tourism.

At countless interviews with The Citizen, he would cite Iringa, Mwanza, Zanzibar and, lately, Dodoma as suitable locations mini-conference facilities.

For Dar es Salaam, it was a blessing already after the construction of the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre (JNICC) through a grant from China, and its management placed under AICC.

What he planned for Dodoma, - newly-launched as the national capital - was a top end hotel which would target conference delegates and business visitors to the designated capital. Establishment of a convention hotel is among the projects he has been pursuing during endless discussions with the Dodoma City authorities.

“Discussions have been going on. They have mainly centred on the cost of the proposed plot but no conclusive decision has been made,” he said.

Immediately after the outbreak of Covid-19 in Tanzania in March last year, Kaaya revealed that AICC lost Sh1 billion in cancelled conferences for 2020.

He has repeatedly emphasised the need for Tanzania to seriously invest in state-of-the-art conference facilities in order to become a leading destination for convention tourism.

“The need for larger seamless halls to cater for exhibitions and conferences is missing,” he told The Citizen in his last comprehensive interview. He said the largest rooms at AICC and JNICC have the capacity to host a maximum of 1,350 and 1,003 delegates respectively.

When all rooms at each of the two conference centres are combined, they can accommodate a total of 5,000 delegates; 3,000 for AICC and 2,000 for JNICC.