Ideas & Debate

After SGR, the Lamu-Turkana highway deserves top priority

road

Road construction. The Lamu-Turkana highway is a perfect model of bottom-up economic stimulus. FILE PHOTO | NMG

As the Jubilee team enters its second term of leadership, I am sure it is busy firming up development plans including infrastructure projects.

The leaders will likely be focusing on projects that will define their legacy as they seek to complete those started and embark on new ones.

Unlike in their first term, the national debt is today quite high thus limiting cash available for new projects. This is why the government will need to sharpen its pencils in deciding what projects to prioritise.

It is expected that only those projects that clearly add value to Jubilee’s economic, political and social agenda are likely to make the cut and this will largely borrow from their election promises.

In 2013 the government prominently focused on regional connectivity infrastructure, especially with Uganda and Rwanda. Out of these, it is mainly the standard gauge railway (SGR) that has survived the day. The railway is operational all the way to Nairobi with much progress recorded for a Naivasha extension.

To register full economic value, the SGR should remain a top priority until it reaches the border. It is understood that Uganda is finalising funding for the railway from the border to Kampala, and thereafter Rwanda will likely extend it to Kigali.

It is when the railway reaches Kampala that Mombasa port will realise its maximum potential, while ring-fencing its competitiveness as a regional port.

With the SGR already making good progress, the proposed dual carriageway between Mombasa and Nairobi becomes less of an economic priority for the country as most cargo and passengers will be expected to transfer to SGR.

A dual carriageway is not a must-do project at a time when budgetary resources are tight. I strongly believe that after the SGR the next most defining legacy project for Jubilee should be a new highway from Lamu to Lokichar in Turkana County.

If the project is split into four concurrent contacts, it can be completed and commissioned within the next five years.

The highway is a key component of former President Kibaki’s visionary Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) corridor project launched in 2011.

The Lamu-Turkana highway is a perfect model of bottom-up economic stimulus that will unlock vast developmental opportunities and possibilities in the hitherto ignored northern half of Kenya. Improved access will stimulate economic activities among counties on the corridor as previously inaccessible resources are linked to national, regional and international trade.

New towns and settlements will spring up along the new highway while existing towns will grow into large commercial centres.

As communities lessen their nomadic lives and enter into the cash economy, improved socio-economic opportunities will significantly reduce chronic insecurity prevalent in northern Kenya.

Once the LAPSSET highway is in place, linkages with the Mombasa corridor will logically flourish. Road connections like Kibwezi-Kitui-Garissa, Nairobi-Isiolo, Nakuru-Nyahururu-Mararal, Nakuru-Nginyang, and Kitale-Lokichar will all develop into critical inter-connectors between Mombasa and Lamu corridors.

This will increase trade opportunities and flexibility across Kenya while local and international tourism blossoms.

Another critical and urgent justification for the Lamu-Loichar highway is that we will soon be building a crude oil pipeline from the Turkana oil basins to Lamu.

READ: Kenya’s first crude oil pipeline takes shape

To improve access and security for the pipeline project, it is important that a highway be in place. This is essential for keeping pipeline project costs down while minimising insecurity risks. A Lamu port without effective highway links for evacuating imports and feeding in exports will be uneconomic.

By the time the port is completed we should have in place highway links with the neighbouring South Sudan, southern Ethiopia, and the high GDP Mt Kenya region.

There are of course many other pressing infrastructure projects that are competing for the attention of the Jubilee team.

This is why the government needs to prioritise projects with most socio-economic value and impact.

In this article I have tried to make a case to justify early opening up of northern Kenya with a first class highway. It is a project with significant potential to unify and equalise Kenya.