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News
enya has launched its biggest infrastructure project since independence with the opening of the Madaraka Express between Nairobi and Mombasa.
Built with a loan from a Chinese bank, the railway will take four and a half hours to make the trip and provide access to destinations including Tsavo East/West, Chyulu and Amboseli. TRANSPORT Meanwhile, the Lake Victoria transport system gained an unexpected boost when Rwanda opted to pull out of the Kenyan Standard railway gauge in favour of Tanzania’s Central Corridor. The project around Lake Victoria includes massive upgrades to port infrastructure and multiple road and rail routes. In South Africa, the embattled President Zuma rolled out his country’s new Metrorail system, or “The People’s Trains”. Metrorail will cost $4 billion and take 20 years, but is a necessary fix to South Africa’s aging and unreliable fleet. South Africa has also elected to adopt a Road Freight strategy, aiming to let South Africa achieve the best possible operational standards of roadfreight operations through an integrated regulatory and operational framework. In The Gambia, Fly Mid Africa has obtained permission to begin flying to Liberia, Guinea and Ivory Coast in an attempt to connect various west African hubs. Already operating between Banjul, Dakar, Senegal, Accra, Lagos and Freetown, the airline is expanding its network and its reliable, efficient transport services across West Africa.
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F I N A N he European Union has given Tanzania more than $200 million to develop its energy sector through the German Development Bank and the French Agency for development. The project will fund electrification efforts in northwestern Tanzania, covering the Kagera, Geita and Kigoma regions.
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The money is an advance on an eventually full investment of $696 million by 2020 to help increase the country’s low electricity coverage. Elsewhere, China’s Belt and Road initiative continues to develop, with Chinese investors underwriting billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investment along the old Silk Road to link it to Europe, Africa and Asia. East Africa will see investment in port and transport infrastructure on the sea route, with Kenya and Ethiopia set to become key players. China seems favourable towards homegrown African development, although there are concerns that the security environment in some parts of the continent may preclude infrastructure development.
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