Is Machakos City a dream built on quicksand?

An artist’s impression of Machakos City.

Machakos County: In 1895, the British government had a dream. Using taxpayers’ money, an idea was hatched to build a railway line from the Kenyan coast up to Lake Victoria to open up the region’s interior and prove the colonial power’s ability over her European rivals. The proposal was met with the following words of derision:

What it will cost no words can express; What is its object no brain can suppose; Where it will start from no one can guess; Where it is going to nobody knows; What is the use of it none can conjecture; What it will carry there’s none can define... And in spite of George Curzon’s superior lecture, it clearly is naught but a lunatic line.