Kenya, Uganda expect railway to boost cargo movement

By George Obulutsa

Kenya and Uganda expect cargo trains running on a standard gauge railway due to be operational in three years will treble speeds and carry 10 times more freight than trains now, a senior official said on Monday.

The new railway linking Kenya’s Mombasa port to Uganda’s capital Kampala via Nairobi is meant to supplement an existing metre gauge railway, which was built by the British at the turn of the previous century. "This (new) railway is a high capacity railway line in the sense that the loads for that railway are beyond 30 million tonnes per year," Nduva Muli, Kenya Railways managing director, told Reuters in an interview.

Freight on the trains varies from exports of tea and coffee and imports such as flour, sugar and machinery.

Muli said longer trains made up of wagons with double-deck container holders would carry 10,000 tonnes of freight and travel at an average speed of 100 km-120 km per hour.

Mismanagement

Kenya Railways says trains using the metre gauge track travel at about 40 km per hour with single deck wagons that hold at most two short containers and carry up to 1,000 tonnes. Years of mismanagement of the railway system have seen much of the freight destined for Kenya’s interior and landlocked neighbours, moved by road.

Although much cheaper, the railway carries less than six per cent of cargo to Kenya and the hinterland — Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, parts of Tanzania, south Sudan and Ethiopia. The main highway from Mombasa to Kenya’s capital Nairobi and onto Kampala is clogged loaded lorries, many carrying a single container.

—Reuters