China hopes to expand East African rail network and develop ports

Name: Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China
Uploaded: 2022-01-10T01:00:24.000Z
Duration: 2 min 9 s
Description: Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China

The proposals could see Kenya’s Mombasa-Nairobi rail link extended to the Uganda border and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti line expanding to 5 other countries in total

There is no rush to implement the plans and analysts said it remains to be seen how much appetite China has to finance the schemes

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The Djibouti-Addis Ababa Railway opened in January 2017. Photo: Felix Wong

Jevans Nyabiage

Published: 9:00am, 10 Jan 2022

China is proposing a grand infrastructure plan for the Horn of Africa that would involve expanding the two major railroads and developing ports on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Under the proposals, announced during last week’s visit by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway in Kenya will be extended to Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and eventually to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China

Meanwhile the line linking the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa with Djibouti would be extended to Eritrea – but both plans will only happen in “due course”.

Wang also called for faster development of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to develop a framework of “two axes plus two coasts”.

“This is part of our effort to help this part of the region to accelerate the building of industrial belts and economic belts to create more jobs,” Wang said at a briefing with Kenyan counterpart Raychelle Omamo in the coastal city of Mombasa on Thursday.

Besides Kenya, Wang visited Eritrea, which occupies a strategic location on the Red Sea and signed up for the Belt and Road Initiative in November, and Comoros, an archipelago on the Indian Ocean where China has been increasing its footprint under its Maritime Silk Road, the seabourne part of the BRI.

Wang’s visit may help revive plans to extend the Mombasa-Nairobi line to Malaba on the border with Uganda, which stalled after China’s Export-Import Bank asked Kenya in 2018 to redo a study to prove its commercial viability.