Kenya has never lacked for racing talent; what it has lacked is a national rally franchise run with the discipline of a business. For years the World Rally Championship’s return to the country generated headlines without a clear operational owner. That gap is what the latest appointment is meant to close. Youth Affairs Cabinet Secretary Salim Mvurya has named Carl “Flash” Tundo, one of the country’s most decorated rally drivers, Chief Executive Officer of the Safari Rally Project and Secretary of its oversight team, with effect from 5 June 2026.
The move puts a competitor, rather than a career administrator, at the wheel of the project. It is a deliberate bet, and it carries an obvious logic and an obvious risk.
The Logic: Credibility From the Cockpit
The Safari Rally is not an ordinary fixture. Its restoration to the WRC calendar gave Kenya one of the few global sporting properties hosted on the continent, an event that draws international teams, broadcasters and visitors to Nairobi and the gravel stages beyond it. Running it well is a logistics, sponsorship and rights-management exercise as much as a sporting one.
Appointing a champion to lead it answers the most basic question any rights-holder, sponsor or international federation asks first: does the person in charge understand the sport from the inside. Tundo does, in a way no administrator could claim. That credibility is an asset when negotiating with teams and partners who can tell competence from improvisation within minutes.
The takeaway: in a sport built on trust between organisers and competitors, a champion at the helm starts several lengths ahead.
The Structure: A CEO and an Oversight Team
The design of the role is as telling as the choice of person. Tundo is both CEO and Secretary of the oversight team, which places day-to-day management and board-level accountability in a defined relationship rather than leaving the project to drift between ministries. A standing oversight team implies the Safari Rally Project is being treated as an institution with a balance sheet to answer for, not a one-off event budget.
That matters for Kenyan taxpayers and sponsors alike. Major sporting events absorb public money and foreign exchange; the return comes only if the books, the rights deals and the delivery are managed by someone answerable to a board. Pairing an executive with an oversight team is the more durable way to run a property of this scale.
The takeaway: structure, not stardom, is what keeps a marquee event solvent across seasons.
The Risk: From Driving to Managing
The bet is not without hazard. The skills that win rallies are not the skills that close sponsorship rounds, manage staff or reconcile a project budget, and the history of athletes moving into administration is mixed across the continent. Tundo’s competitive credibility opens doors; whether it translates into operational delivery is the open question the next two seasons will answer.
Much will depend on the team built around him and on how clearly the oversight body defines targets, whether measured in visitor numbers, broadcast reach, or the share of the event’s spend that stays in the Kenyan economy. A champion’s instinct for the stage is necessary but not sufficient.
The takeaway: credibility gets the project to the start line; management is what gets it to the finish.
For Kenya, the Safari Rally is a test case in whether the country can run a global property as a professional enterprise rather than a recurring event. The choice of a champion to lead it is a statement of intent. The result, as in any rally, will be measured not at the launch but over the full distance. The appointment was set out in the Kenya Gazette notices for early June.
