Why Kenya and the region need modern railway lines

By Mohamed Jaffer

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project has elicited a lot of debate recently and become a permanent feature in public discourse. While this is laudable, most of the comments have unfortunately taken a negative hue and seem preoccupied with the cost of the project.

Nobody seems to be interested in looking at the other side of the coin – the current situation relating to transport insufficiency on the Northern Corridor, which over the years has escalated the cost of doing business in all countries serviced by this inland transport artery.

The sum of such costs from the days when rail performance started to decline till the present day is certainly enormous to warrant any further enduring.

As someone who leads a group whose commercial interests involve directly interacting with the port and its hinterland’s transport infrastructure and service providers as a matter of course and intimately, I have some thoughts which I wish to share on this matter of great national and regional interest.

For starters, the Northern Corridor currently offers both rail and road transport. However, due to the decline of rail transport attributed to various factors, the road has become the dominant transport system for the corridor in recent years.

The adverse effect of this trend has been visible at the Mombasa port where persistent congestions have been experienced. The main attribution for this situation is that the low capacity of the current railway system has made the road the preferred option and has handicapped provision of mass evacuation of landed consignments at the port.

Various measures were then adopted to divert traffic back to rail. First, there was the establishment of dry ports at strategic locations to attract freight back to rail. Unfortunately, the dry ports at Embakasi, Eldoret and Kisumu could not achieve the goal mainly due to the inefficiency stigma attached to the rail. Even after the concession to Rift Valley Railways to run the line, not much was achieved in this privatised set up as things hardly changed for the better. In fact it has deteriorated. The preference for the road haulage therefore prevailed.

Then there was the commissioning of various Container Freight Stations (CFSs) in Mombasa by private investment. These were to facilitate creation of container storage facilities outside the port easing pressure on the maritime container terminal at Mombasa.

However, considering that most of the CFSs are not rail-served, the road sustained as well as consolidated its dominance as the main link between the port and the CFSs as well as the rest of the hinterland. This is apart from the fact that the CFSs created a need to double handle cargo within Mombasa prior to dispatch to final destinations which is an additional cost to the importer.

It is obvious the above measures have not contributed to reducing the cost of doing business in the region. Instead, such costs have persistently escalated to the effect that some businesses have been threatening to divert their traffic to Dar es Salaam.

Perhaps to get a better perspective of the hazard of retaining the status quo – i.e. not installing the proposed SGR railway system – we need to extend our horizon further. In Kenya alone, several developments would need a situation where we have sufficient capacity to facilitate mass transportation of freight both incoming and outgoing.

The current situation is just not viable when juxtaposed against demand dynamics going forward. This position is also true with other countries serviced by the Northern Corridor. These developments include the new-found minerals in Kenya and the rest of the hinterland whose export will improve our balance of payment; planned industries which will be commissioned in line with Vision 2030 which will need efficient supply of raw material as well as export of products.