Nairobi Expressway to be commissioned in six months, says CS

The Nairobi Expressway [Courtesy]

President Uhuru Kenyatta will commission the Nairobi Expressway in April 2022.

Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia made the announcement yesterday, during a site visit to assess the progress of the works.

He also announced that the road was 64 per cent complete. "Test runs on the road will take place in March next year, as we are confident that the contractors will have completed all works by February." 

Macharia added that the project will be completed in two years instead of the earlier projected four years. “We shortened the project as the contractors worked 24 hours a day.”

“The Expressway must not be seen as just an infrastructural project. It's part of a bigger story of moving labour and capital much faster from one point to another,” the CS said.

"When complete, a journey from Ruaka to JKIA will take you a maximum of 30 minutes instead of the two to three hours," he added.

But more importantly, the CS said, agricultural produce from Kiambu to JKIA will take less than an hour to get to JKIA and to markets in the city centre. "The lifeblood of every country's economy is infrastructure. And no one has built more infrastructure in Africa than Uhuru has in 10 years.”

State House Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita, who accompanied the CS, said the project was purely Public-Private Partnership, with no debt incurred by the government.

Construction of the Sh64 billion expressway, which started in late 2020, has come at a cost for businesses and residents along Mombasa Road.