Keepingitlocal
Chinese SOES’ operations in East Africa transform from infrastructure construction to benefiting people and national development
While driving their railway freight wagon back and forth to deliver equipment, Li Xiaohua and Peng Zhanbin enjoy a bonus - watching wildlife passing by. The Chinese veterans have been working at the construction site of the Mombasa-nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya since May 2016.
Officially launched on December 12, 2014, the 472km railway built by the China Road and Bridge Corp. (CRBC) is the biggest infrastructure project in Kenya since its independence in 1963. It is also considered the flagship of Kenya Vision 2030, the development plan that seeks to realize a medium-industrialized Kenya by that date. The existing meter gauge railway built by the British connecting the port city Mombasa and capital Nairobi has been used for more than a century. Its annual freight volume began decreasing due to lack of maintenance and upgrading and today, accounts for less than 10 percent of Mombasa’s total throughput. operation by the summer of 2017. It will cut passengers’ travel time to a little more than four hours from over 10, and less than eight hours for freight trains. The second phase will see the railway extend to neighboring Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.
“Our goal is to make this project quality-oriented and sustainable,” Sun said.
So far, more than 38,000 Kenyans have been employed. The project has also boosted local industrial development by buying materials such as cement and steel locally as well as cooperating with over 200 subcontractors, according to the Social Responsibility Report 2015 on Mombasa-nairobi SGR Project released by CRBC earlier in 2016.
“The best part of this project is that young engineers like me know both the similarities and differences between Chinese and British standards in railway construction. So we can find a suitable solution for our country’s development,” said Stephen Mutiso Makovo, a 29-year-old assistant structural engineer from Kenya.