Kenya is on schedule to complete the country’s largest single infrastructure project since it gained independence in 1963. Shem Oirere writes that a new 472km line will open as planned in June 2017, cutting the current 12-hour train journey from the capital Nairobi to the port of Mombasa by eight hours.
The $75 billion project has been funded by a Chinese bank, but cannot be electrified until Kenya’s notoriously unreliable power transmission infrastructure is upgraded. The Kenyan line is part of a much larger Mombasa – Kampal – Jube rail network designed to boost much-needed economic activity in the third world, with the governments of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan expected to construct their respective sections.
- We've read it in: International Railway Journal, June 2016, p30
