Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) is building its own taxi-hailing app for Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), and it wants technology firms to help make it happen.
According to tender documents seen by the Business Daily, KAA has put out an open call for tech companies to design, build, and run a mobile and web-based taxi dispatch platform under a public-private partnership arrangement.
The winning firm will operate the system and hand over a percentage of passenger fares to KAA every month, with the exact cut to be proposed as part of the bidding process.
The app will only work with yellow taxi cabs that are already licensed and vetted to operate at JKIA. Passengers can book through a KAA-branded mobile app, a web portal, or physical kiosks at the airport.
Features include real-time fare estimates, vehicle tracking, trip notifications, and an automatic dispatch engine that assigns drivers and manages queues across terminals.
GPS-based geofencing will restrict taxis to approved zones within the airport, which KAA says will prevent unauthorized pickups and keep operations orderly. The system will also support surge pricing and advance bookings.
For KAA, this is partly a revenue play. The authority currently depends on passenger ticket fees and aircraft landing charges, and JKIA handled 6.8 million international and 2.1 million domestic passengers in 2024, a market that Uber and Bolt have been quietly dominating.
The app is also designed to eventually expand beyond taxis into duty-free shopping, parking, lounge bookings, and in-airport navigation. KAA also plans to earn from digital advertising and sponsored listings on the platform.
The selected vendor has three months from contract signing to get the system live.
