Tanzania, Kenya to be benefited by AfDB’s €345mn road construction support

More than 3 million people in Kenya and Tanzania are going to be benefited from a 345 million euro financing package for road construction support. The African Development Bank has approved the project on Thursday.

The Bank’s support for the Mombasa-Lunga Lunga/Horohoro and Tanga-Pangani-Bagamoyo roads Phase I, is in the form of African Development Bank and African Development Fund loans and represents 78.5 percent of the total 399.7 million euro project cost. The European Union contributed a grant of 30 million euro, 7.7 percent of the total project cost, to the government of Kenya.

“The project will have spillover benefits for hinterland countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan that depend on Mombasa as gateway to global markets,” Hussein Iman, the African Development Bank’s Regional Sector Manager for infrastructure, private sector, and industrialization opined.

The African Development Bank’s support will also provide roadside trading facilitates for sellers, half of them women who currently operate in disorganized and unsafe conditions. The road crosses regions with high rates of youth unemployment. In light of this, the project includes a vocational training component for 500 unemployed youth (half of them women) to acquire marketable skill and improve their economic prospects.

This first phase involves the construction of 175 kilometre of road sections:  the 121 kilometre Mkanga-Pangani road section in Tanzania and the 54 kilometre Mombasa-Kilifi road section in Kenya.