Railway breathes fresh business into struggling towns in Kenya

Construction materials of the Standard Gauge Railway at Emali in Makueni County. Emali town hosts one of SGR’s two pre-stressed concrete sleeper factories that also manufactures rail line T-bolts. [PHOTO: BEVERLYNE MUSILI/STANDARD]

NAIROBI: The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) has given much needed fillip to business in townships located along the Nairobi-Mombasa Road. This is evidenced by amplified vibrancy resulting from augmented money flow in the recent past.

Emali Township, for instance, today hosts one of SGR’s two pre-stressed concrete sleeper factories that also manufactures rail line T-bolts. The other one is in Metito Andei.

A casual survey shows the factory has breathed fresh business oxygen into the town suitable for the lungs of a rising population. Rent and other charges are spiraling upwards. Entrepreneurship is making more sense as those with money to invest strive to cash in on increased demand for accommodation, food, social and others that have come with Chinese and local labour inflow. Even dogs that are a delicacy for the orients are on demand.

Enterprising teachers are busy striking while the iron is hot by teaching English and Kiswahili to interested Chinese with no prior knowledge of the languages important for communication in this part of the world. “I make an extra Sh3,000 per month,” a secondary school teacher in Emali divulged on condition of anonymity. It is the same narratives in Makindu, Mbui Nzau, Kibwezi, Mtito Andei and Voi all the way to the port of Mombasa.

Bar and hotel business is gradually shifting from an over reliance on long distance track drivers to wage earners. Hotel rooms that previously went for as little as Sh500 in Emali and other smaller towns are now charging between Sh800 and Sh1, 000. Mtito Andei and Voi that have always had tourist class facilities have seen a revamp as rarely witnessed.

Back to Emali. The town inundated by sugary water melons, mangoes and vegetable products grown by irrigation on farms in Makueni and Kajiado Counties or ferried in from the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro is awake and blinking to unprecedented commercial aura evidenced by a groundswell of hawkers. “Business has been good of late,” effuses mother of one Beatrice Kamene. “This rail construction is a boon for us.”

Sultan Hamud has no factory affiliated to SGR, but the town named after Sultan Seyyid Hammoud bin Mohammed of Zanzibar when he took a train ride from Mombasa to a temporary railhead there in 1898 hardly sleeps these days.

A resident Mr Mwova Wambua attributes the new tempo to an increased circulation of money after property owners along the line pocketed compensation dues. “Bar and butchery owners are literary minting money since these payments were done. Twilight girls are here from all over to do justice to the windfall,” he says.

“Many of us have moved to fruit and vegetable business from charcoal due to increased demand from people working on the railway,” says Ngilesi Mbithe, a middle aged small-scale businesswoman who hawks her wares by the roadside.

At Makindu famous for a Sikh temple (Gurdwara) that offers free food in exchange for philanthropic donations, more food is being cooked and more donations collected. The Gurdwara complex built in 1926 has rooms and beds. Its cavernous dining hall that is open to all irrespective of religion has always been full since work on the railway started in 2013.

In what looks like a replay of the Uganda railway construction days over 100 years ago, Makindu is playing a prominent role as a service point on the line’s advance. Never since the days of founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who routinely stopped at Mtito Andei in his frequent “busy” trips to Mombasa by road has the town’s effervescence been so evident.

REVITALISED ECONOMY

This site of the second SGR compressed concrete sleepers factory is transforming from over-reliance on truck drivers and buses to a market for honey and fruits sought by foreign and local workers on the SGR. The swelling population has brought with it a high demand for portable water and vegetables.

For Voi, struggle to breathe after the asphyxia caused by a re-routed Mombasa/Nairobi highway has been lessened by SGR’s decision to follow in the spoors of the Lunatic Express that had the Coastal town among most important terminals.

SGR’s technology transfer competence training college set up in the town is attracting students from all over the country, an obvious buoy to the economy that has been on the down turn since operational hiccups hit the dilapidated Voi-Taveta railway line.

Businessman Mwangeka Mwandondo says Voi will wake up and run again once trains start rolling on the new line with passenger and freight loads. Mwandondo’s optimism for revitalised economy courtesy of SGR is echoed in Mariakani, Manyani, Mazeras and other small towns where the new line passes.