If you follow a few millennials and Gen-Zs on Instagram, your feed will probably be inundated with pictures of some of them posing in  Nairobi’s Central Business District.

They have recently been flocking Nairobi City Market and taking photos next to the beautiful murals that dot the exterior of the 98-year-old building.

The beautiful mural paintings attract not just Instagram-savvy youths but tourists as well. It is not uncommon to find tourists taking pictures of the City Market building that is located at the junction of Muindi Mbingu and Kijabe Street.

Asaph Mui, a curio shop owner at City Market, says there has been a spike in foot traffic since the mural paintings were done.

He says that while many people know City Market as a place to get fresh meat, flowers and other groceries, many do not know that it is a beautiful place that has a curio section which is dependent on art connoisseurs both local and foreign, with more of the latter group flocking the curio section after the mural paintings on the exterior walls went up.

The murals offer direct employment to a team of 21 people, according to Mui.

“Other than doing both abstract and realistic oil on canvas paintings and selling them here at my shop, I also do mural and graffiti paintings. I was one of the people who worked on the City Market mural. Dr Edward Ndekere, a lecturer at Kenyatta University was the managing consultant in charge of the original sketches. We would replicate them on walls and fill them out with colour,” the visual artist, who has owned a curio shop at City Market since 2010, shares with People Daily.

Upcoming artists

Mui says he has gotten more mural work as a direct result of having taken part in the project.

Fridah Ijai, a final-year Fine Arts student at Kenyatta University says taking part in the project stretched her artistic abilities as she had to work on low walls as well as high ones and on a larger scale compared to her oil on canvas paintings.

Ijai is one of five students who took part in the project.

The others were upcoming artists drawn from various places across the country, with a few lecturers helping out with the conceptualisation and design of the murals.

“We wanted to highlight Nairobi City Market in vibrant colours and draw attention to the building so that more Kenyans can appreciate the architecture of the historical building,” says Dr Ndekere, a managing consultant for Empire East Africa Ltd, the company that got the tender.

He says that they started work in November 2021 although the ideas were conceptualised in March 2020.

The delay was largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

They finished the project in late April 2022 having worked with different artists on different walls of City Market and at different times.

He hopes the work brings anyone who comes across it as much joy as it brought the team who worked on it.

And if the rave online reviews are anything to go by, the team appears to have achieved their objective.

An operator of one of the butcheries at City Market says that while there has been an increase in traffic to the market, it has not necessarily converted into more sales.

He says some people come in and order meat saying they were on their way home but decided to come and shop at City Market after seeing the building’s beautiful murals from a distance.

He attributes the modest increase in traffic to the struggling economy, partly because of the impact of Covid-19.

Peter Wanjohi, a boda boda operator, says the mural paintings have had no impact on his business. He is, however, happy to look at the colourful drawings between client trips.

He says that, thanks to the murals, he now knows that City Market is a storeyed building that is more than just the ground floor where people frequent to buy fish and meat.

“More of Nairobi should have mural paintings. It might not solve the many problems that plague the city but it might lead to increased wellness and happiness among those who view the work. The bright colours on the murals have a way of brightening people’s moods,” says Wanjohi.