President William Ruto sought funding from China to extend the SGR to Malaba on his recent visit to Beijing.
The SGR cost over $3 billion but is still losing money. It is very popular with passenger travellers but it only gets a small percentage of freight to Nairobi because it is still necessary to transship to trucks in Nairobi or Naivasha. So why invest $5 billion to extend the SGR from Naivasha to Malaba?
Analysts point out that the SGR only gets 18 percent of freight traffic to Nairobi and only 30 percent of existing Ugandan freight. Therefore they argue that extending the SGR to Malaba will only increase losses.
But extending the SGR to Malaba will be qualitatively different. Uganda has already committed to building an SGR line from Kampala to Malaba so the SGR will go all the way from Mombasa to the Ugandan capital in less than a day.
That will be a game changer. It will be much quicker to use the train to get to Kampala, Kigali or Goma. Freight on the SGR will grow exponentially
Extending the SGR to Malaba is the right investment at the right time.
Quote of the day: "Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments."
Alexander Hamilton
He was appointed the first US Treasury Secretary on September 11, 1789
