Larry Madowo surprisingly differs with Jeremy Clarkson over JKIA

CNN International Correspondent and host of the African Voices Changemakers and Playmakers series, Larry Madowo has come out to defend the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, (JKIA)after English television presenter, journalist, and writer Jeremy Clarkson branded the airport as the “stupidest airport in Africa,”

JKIA is Kenya’s largest and busiest airport, located in Nairobi, the capital and largest city of Kenya. It is also the flagship airport of The KAA and serves as a hub for many airlines and destinations.

Sharing Jeremy’s tweet Larry noted even though he is one of the airports biggest critics he would not term it as stupid.

He went on to point out compared to other African nations JKIA was actually way better than the British motorsport enthusiast gave it credit for.

“I’ve been complaining about how bad JKIA is for 10+ years. But I don’t agree that it’s the “stupidest” airport in Africa. Not even close,” Larry shared on his X platform.

He went on to however, add that to some extent he does understand why Jeremy would be so pressed about the international airport seeing as the journalist has complained about the services offered there among a few other things for close to ten years now.

Larry found tweets from 8 years ago, 12th February, 2017 to be exact where 64-year-old Mr. Clarkson had shared his 5 most annoying airports and JKIA was listed as number 4.

He detailed his issue with the double security systems and the fact that connecting flights always appeared to have issues forcing clients to miss flights among other things.

“To Jeremy’s credit, he first complained about JKIA in 2017,” the CNN correspondent added in a different tweet.

2 days ago, the former Top Gear star shared a tweet that read “Let’s have a group chat. What’s the stupidest airport in the world? I’ll go first. Madrid.”

Responding to the tweet passionate crypto financial manager Mark McAllister wrote, “Lagos, Nigerian, until you get stopped over 20 times between the door and your seat for no reason you can’t have a true appreciation for how terrible an airport can be,”

Jeremy noted he hadn’t factored in Africa in his earlier tweet but if he were to touch on the continent the Nairobi’s JKIA would be it for him.

“Ok. I’ll take Lagos but if we are in Africa, I’ll raise you Nairobi,” Jeremy wrote. He went on to shade the continent as a whole expressing that besides Johannesburg there was, “not a whole lot of great airports in the continent,”

McAllister went onto shade Kenya with its “free for all passport control similar to those shove a penny games at the fairground,”