Uganda has announced plans to build a new standard gauge railway (SGR) linking the country’s capital, Kampala with the Kenyan border, seeking to lower the cost of transport and improve the country’s competitiveness.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni says the brand new railway line will be built from Kampala to Kasese, and later on, it will be extended from Kampala to the border of Kenya and then to South Sudan.
President Museveni’s announcement revives the hope of Kenya extending the Chinese-funded SGR from Naivasha to Malaba via Kisumu.
Currently, goods destined for Uganda from Mombasa port are transported by road from Naivasha where the SGR line from Mombasa ends.
However, the latest decision by Uganda poses a fresh dilemma for Kenya, which had abandoned plans to extend the SGR line to Kisumu and later on to the Ugandan border.
This is after Kenya failed to secure a multi-billion-shilling loan from China, which had funded the first and second phases of the line. Kenya maintains that rehabilitating the Naivasha-Malaba line and building another short track connecting the SGR at Naivasha is quicker compared to building another SGR.
President Museveni’s declaration on a new SGR also marks a major shift because Uganda, in May last year, signed a KES 5 billion deal with a Chinese firm to revamp its century-old metre gauge railway line between Malaba and Kampala to create seamless travel from the Mombasa port.
According to the deal, the 260-kilometre Kampala line would be linked to the SGR track through the Naivasha to Malaba old railway, which Kenya is upgrading. Once completed, goods from the Mombasa port will be transported seamlessly via SGR and metre gauge rail to Uganda.
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