Kenya announces investment of $210mn to link, upgrade older tracks with new SGR

Kenya has planned to pump out a gigantic amount of USD 210 million funds on linking and upgrading older tracks with its new standard-gauge railway (SGR). The East African country is reportedly giving up the plan to extend the Chinese-funded project to Uganda’s border that would have created a faster export route to the sea for its landlocked neighbours.

Of the sum, USD 60 million will fund a 43-kilometer line meter-gauge link that will act to connect the old and new railways, according to Transport and Infrastructure Secretary James Macharia.

 “We’re looking at options for the railway,” James Macharia told reporters on May 8 in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. “We prefer the private sector so there’s no impact on country’s debt,” he said. The link will take about a year to complete and trucks will be used to connect the two lines in the meantime, he added.

The move is a turnaround for Kenya, which initially planned for the standard-gauge railway to go all the way from East Africa’s largest port of Mombasa to Uganda, replacing an existing century-old meter-gauge link. The government recently abandoned those plans with only half the railway constructed, and hasn’t given an explanation, as reported by Bloomberg.

Chinese contractors are about to complete the second phase of the track near Naivasha, and will terminate construction at that point, according to Macharia. Kenya will spend USD 150 million on revamping the existing meter-gauge railway between Naivasha and Malaba, he said.

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