NAIROBI, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- In Nairobi, a 60,000-seat football stadium is entering the final stage of construction. Built in just two years, the Talanta Stadium will serve as the main venue of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
"The schedule was extremely tight -- just two years, while comparable projects elsewhere usually take more than three," Du Xiao, project manager of the stadium for China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), told Xinhua in a recent interview. "There is a very real sense of pride."
According to Du, the stadium has no running track, bringing spectators close to the pitch. Its seats take on the green, red and black of Kenya's national flag, while the facade features the traditional shield and spear of the Maasai people.
Upon completion, the stadium is set to be renamed the Raila Odinga International Stadium, in honor of Kenya's late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The roof adopts a cable-supported grid system erected with a "cable-first, steel-after" method, which Du said is the first of its kind independently designed and built by China. Without temporary steel supports, 48 radial cables are tensioned to lift six ring cables before steel trusses are laid on top, saving at least three months of construction time, with displacement controlled to the millimeter. In 2025 alone, some 1,300 containers of materials and equipment were shipped from China to the site.
For CRBC, the stadium is only the latest chapter of a much longer story. The company built its first road in Kenya in 1984, and over 42 years, its footprint has extended from roads to bridges, ports, railways and buildings.
Du Shan, the executive general manager of CRBC Kenya office, recalled that before 2008, Nairobi was cut apart by three rivers and a cross-district trip could take more than three hours. After CRBC completed the ring roads, the journey now takes about 50 minutes. The company is also expanding the A8, a national trunk road, from two lanes to four and six, she said.
On the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, wildlife corridors were built with a clearance of more than six meters, "so that giraffes can pass with their heads held high," Du Shan said.
Du Xiao arrived in Kenya in August 2011 and has worked on the ring roads, the Mombasa-Nairobi railway, the Nairobi-Malaba railway and the Nairobi Expressway before taking on the stadium project.
"Working overseas, we should not arrive thinking about changing the place. We should first adapt to and learn from the local community," he said. "What many projects truly open up is not just roads and railways, but trust between people."
The stadium sits near Kibera, Kenya's largest informal settlement. Du Xiao remembers a local young man named Sammy, who had no skills when he applied for a job but volunteered for the project's equipment training and became a pump truck operator. "I asked him why he worked so hard. He said, 'I never thought I would have the chance to touch these machines. Now I feel I can support my whole family.'"
According to Du Shan, the project recruited nearly 500 young workers from the neighborhood during construction, many of whom have qualified as assistant engineers, while about 280 local youths were mentored into technical backbones during the construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi railway.
More than 350 CRBC employees have worked overseas for over a decade, and each year the company awards them a gold medal for long-term dedication, she said. "The medal is not only an honor, but also a kind of warmth. Because 42 years -- it has truly not been easy."
When his child was born, Du Xiao was at a critical stage of the Nairobi Expressway project and could not make it home. "People in overseas engineering live in two worlds -- the project site on one side, the family on the other. All you can do is try to do a little better on each side," he said.
"Maybe I will one day leave this country. But this stadium will remain," he said. "I came here to build projects. Then I found that this country has shaped who I am today." ■