Transport
From The Report: Kenya 2016
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Kenya has been making considerable headway over the past two years on a development agenda designed to strengthen the country’s position as a leading regional transport and logistics centre for the East Africa region. Despite a hefty infrastructure deficit, transport investment is seen as vital. A key component of Kenya’s infrastructure plan is the Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor project, a $24.5bn development stretching across East Africa and northern Kenya. Equally significant is the Mombasa-Malaba standard-gauge railway. Transport activity is expanding in tandem with infrastructure spending. The country saw a 5% growth in the transport and storage sector in 2014, up from 1.22% the previous year. Meanwhile, the total amount of freight traffic by rail grew by 24.3%, from 1.2m tonnes in 2013 to 1.5m tonnes in 2014, and container traffic at the Port of Mombasa rose from 894,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to 1.01m TEUs over the same period.

This chapter contains interviews with Atanas Maina, Managing Director, Kenya Railways; and Gichiri Ndua, Managing Director, Kenya Ports Authority.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Grand designs: Developments across all segments are set to fuel economic growth
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Kenya has been making considerable headway over the past two years on a development agenda designed to strengthen the country’s position as a leading regional transport and logistics centre for the East Africa region. This is in spite of an infrastructure deficit which, according to the World Bank’s “Kenya Public Expenditure Review”, is expected to require annual spending of up to $4bn (around 20% of GDP) over the next decade. Kenya’s plans are supported by increases in government spending,…

Interview

Getting onboard: OBG talks to Atanas Maina, Managing Director, Kenya Railways
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Interview:Atanas Maina How would you rate progress on the development of the Standard-Gauge Railway (SGR) project? ATANAS MAINA: Significant progress has been achieved in a short time. The contract with the engineering, procurement and construction partner was only signed in 2012, and until 2014 we were still working to obtain financing. Just looking at the quantity of money involved, funding was a major challenge, leading to discussions within the country over whether this project was even…

Analysis

High flying: Airport upgrades boost passenger capacity and airline access
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The opening of a new international terminal in late 2014 – Terminal 1a, built at a cost of $129m – and of a second, smaller terminal in May 2015 collectively tripled annual capacity at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), from 2.5m to 7.5m passengers. JKIA has been operating above capacity for well over a decade. Passenger traffic at the airport grew by 127% between 2002 and 2011, according to the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA), which estimates that annual passenger numbers…

Interview

Increasing fluidity: OBG talks to Gichiri Ndua, Managing Director, Kenya Ports Authority (KPA)
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Interview:Gichiri Ndua What specifically is being done to reduce congestion at the Port of Mombasa (PoM)? GICHIRI NDUA: As of today we have about 13,500 containers in the port, while holding capacity stands at around 30,000. This is a result of significant work undertaken over the past few years that has focused on raising the degree of fluidity at the port. First, we added a total of five exit lanes. This has been complemented by the widening of land access, as well as improvements in the…