Nairobi reportedly plans to make its on-street parking fees duration-based (time-based) with a per-hour price. This would replace the existing flat rate of KES200 (about 1.9 USD) per day regardless of parking duration.

Most details of the proposed hourly fee have not yet been announced. It remains to be seen whether this proposal will proceed. A similar proposal in 2012 was abandoned.

A fee-per-hour can improve street parking conditions by discouraging long-duration parking in prime locations. By contrast, flat-rate fees per day cannot play any useful parking management role and can only be about revenue.

For various reasons why duration-based parking fees are far superior to flat-fees for all day parking, see https://www.reinventingparking.org/2012/11/parking-policy-basics-time-based-fees.html

Nairobi previously had parking meters for on-street parking in the central area, but they were removed in the late 1990s and flat-rate per day fees collected by parking attendants were introduced .

Since 2014, Nairobi has had a mobile-phone-based electronic payment system (Ejijipay) for parking. This is promising, since it should enable a smooth transition to payments of duration-based parking. There is also the option to pay a parking attendant in cash who should then complete the transaction electronically using a city-issued phone (ITDP Africa, 2016).

However, as pointed out by ITDP in 2016, there are loopholes in the enforcement and payment system and parking attendants have too much discretion over whether to take action over parking infractions, such as failure to pay. Sure enough, investigations in 2019 and 2020 found that collusion between parking attendants and motorists was costing the city Sh437,500 every day from lost on-street parking fees and that only 31 percent of motorists actually paid the city for their parking (Collins Omulo, 2021).

Any implementation of time-based fees will also need to close these loopholes if it is to succeed.