McKinsey & Company opens Kenya office, 7th in Africa

Global strategy consultancy McKinsey & Company has recently opened a new office in Nairobi, Kenya. With the latest addition, McKinsey’s footprint spans 107 offices globally, of which seven in Africa. 

McKinsey’s decision to launch an operations in Kenya is based on three key factors. Firstly, over the past years McKinsey has already been active in the country, restructuring several blue chip companies (e.g. East African Breweries, Kenya Commercial Bank, Britam), and based on the growing demand for its services, the consulting firm has now decided to establish an on-the-ground presence to better serve its local customer base. Secondly, McKinsey considers Kenya’s capital and largest city as the ideal hub for its operations in the region. Following an internal review of potential office locations the choice went in Nairobi’s favour, mainly due to its strategic position as an economic hub in the Eastern African region and the quality of its human capital, says Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company.

Thirdly, McKinsey sees massive potential in the African content, in particular in the areas of infrastructure and energy, explains Bill Russo, Managing Partner at McKinsey East Africa. “There is $100 billion in infrastructure investment in the region. We all know the correlation between economic growth and infrastructure investment is a strong one. The second thing is if you look at energy, we estimate that there are 290 gigawatts of energy potential in East Africa. Today there’s only an install base of seven gigawatts.” In addition, Russo highlights that the region still has a largely unexplored resource potential, providing countries a huge opportunity to capitalise on value.

Courtesy call

To celebrate the opening of the new location, McKinsey’s Managing Director Dominic Barton early September paid a courtesy call to Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta at the State House in Mombasa. During the meeting Barton briefed the President on his company's mission and plans for how the firm potentially could add value to Kenya’s economy. In the coming months McKinsey will focus on further expanding its client base and building its consulting team. “We’re excited by the potential of Kenyan talent to join us in McKinsey,” says Russo.

With the opening of the Nairobi location McKinsey now has seven offices in Africa