Transport

Kenya has been making considerable headway over the past two years on a development agenda designed to strengthen the country’s position as a leading regional transport and logistics centre for the East Africa region. Despite a hefty infrastructure deficit, transport investment is seen as vital. A key component of Kenya’s infrastructure plan is the Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor project, a $24.5bn development stretching across East Africa and northern Kenya. Equally significant is the Mombasa-Malaba standard-gauge railway. Transport activity is expanding in tandem with infrastructure spending. The country saw a 5% growth in the transport and storage sector in 2014, up from 1.22% the previous year. Meanwhile, the total amount of freight traffic by rail grew by 24.3%, from 1.2m tonnes in 2013 to 1.5m tonnes in 2014, and container traffic at the Port of Mombasa rose from 894,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to 1.01m TEUs over the same period.

This chapter contains interviews with Atanas Maina, Managing Director, Kenya Railways; and Gichiri Ndua, Managing Director, Kenya Ports Authority.