MAKING AFRICA MORE ACCESSIBLE
Africa’s Standard Gauge Railway represents a real opportunity for the continent, but construction isn’t without its challenges
Without infrastructure, there will be no investors. Without investors, there will be no jobs for our youth.”
So said the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta last October, as he launched the second phase of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, a $1.5 billion high-speed railway running from the capital of Nairobi to Naivasha.
The first phase of the SGR project was completed in 2017, following two years of construction. Costing $3.8 billion dollars, the railway stretches
for 300 miles from the port city of Mombasa to the capital of Nairobi. Both phases of the project were predominantly financed by China Eximbank and built by China Road and Bridge Corporation.
The train running from Mombasa to Nairobi was named the Madaraka Express after the day Kenya attained self-rule – it replaced the colonial era British railway, known as the “Lunatic Express”. Once a slow and shaky ride taking up to a day, the travel time between Mombasa and Nairobi was shortened to just four hours. The new express also had the capacity to transport around half the goods coming into Mombasa Port, compared to previous figures of around five percent.
“We now celebrate not the Lunatic Express but the Madaraka Express, that will begin to reshape the story of Kenya for the next 100 years. I am proud to be associated with this day,” Kenyatta announced.
These railways are part of a more ambitious infrastructure project that will connect to western Kenya and six other East African countries, including Ethiopia and Tanzania. Parts of the network have already been built, including a 756-kilometre railway between Djibouti port to Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa.
GAME CHANGING INFRASTRUCTURE
For many people, Africa’s new railways herald wide economic benefits for the continent.
“It’s a big game changer,” said Aly Khan Satchu, a financial analyst based in Nairobi, who was interviewed by CNN about the Kenyan SGR.
“We’ve got cheap geothermal power in Naivasha – you can tap into that power. You can build your factories, you can put your goods on the railway, you can export it to Mombasa and you can access a three billion person market on the Indian Ocean economy.”
Before the creation of the SGR, 45 percent of the cost of Kenyan goods went towards transport expenditure – a cost that is now significantly lower.
Scholars Wang Bing and Nancy Muthoni Githaiga conducted a research study into both the benefits and drawbacks of the Kenyan SGR. They argue that the new SGR not only yields economic benefits but also reduces the country’s carbon footprint, as the new train is a much lower emitter than the previous one. Furthermore, at least 60 new jobs were created for every kilometre of railway built – thanks to both construction and the production and supply of building materials like steel and cement. The Kenyan government had a policy that at least 40 percent of the labour and commodities used had to be sourced from within the country, thereby directly benefitting its economy.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway (EDR) was also praised last year for transporting around 70,000 tonnes of fertiliser from Djibouti port to Ethiopia in time for the main harvest season. This important fertiliser was transported in 26 rounds. According to the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway Share company, it would have formerly taken around 75 freight trucks to transport the amount carried by a single train, and the journey would have taken three days as opposed to 11 hours.