No longer the ‘train to nowhere’: Kenya president pins hopes for growth on new Chinese-built railway
Corruption and environmental concerns, and its US$3.2 billion price tag have dogged the project during construction
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday inaugurated a Chinese-built railway, the country’s biggest infrastructure project since independence that is aimed at cementing its role as the gateway to East Africa.
The boxy red-and-white diesel train left from a gleaming new station in the port city of Mombasa, carrying Kenyatta, Chinese dignitaries and citizens from around the country on its maiden journey to Nairobi.
The five-hour trip will take less than half the time to drive between the two cities, a hair-raising trip on a one-lane highway clogged with lumbering trucks and where accidents claim dozens of lives each year.
“Today we celebrate one of the key cornerstones to Kenya’s transformation to an industrialised, prosperous, middle-income country,” Kenyatta said at the inauguration ceremony.
Dubbed the Madaraka (Freedom) Express, the train can carry 1,260 passengers and replaces the so-called lunatic express – a railway built more than a century ago by colonial Britain which was known for lengthy delays and breakdowns.
The old railway, the construction of which became the stuff of legend as a pair of man-eating lions devoured some 135 workers, is credited with shaping Kenya into its current form.