Big spending takes road connectivity a rung higher

What you need to know:

Leaders put the sector, which had been neglected in former president Moi’s era, high on the development agenda.

Despite the notable efforts to spruce up infrastructure over the past decade, the long term approach since independence is quite vague with a mix of opportunities taken, lost and plenty of catching up to be done.

Infrastructure development is the jewel in the crown of retired President Mwai Kibaki’s crown, with the flagship being the Sh33 billion Thika Super Highway linking the capital to the resourceful Mount Kenya region.

University of Nairobi economist Samuel Nyandemo says that founding father Jomo Kenyatta’s rule (1963-1978) was vibrant with growth reaching 9.6 per cent.

Under his successor, retired president Daniel arap Moi, however, a breakdown in development of physical facilities followed, mostly because of poor leadership.

“This was a different scenario that is clearly demonstrated by the quality of leadership,” says Dr Nyandemo, adding that it was an opportunity lost because Kenya had no external threats or major calamities to distract from the development agenda.

The 1980s was an era of affordable credit that saw Asian countries take advantage to finance massive infrastructure that acted as a springboard for accelerated growth up.

Institute of Economic Affairs chief executive officer Kwame Owino says there has been the right focus on roads but rail has virtual been neglected.

Kenya was bequeathed a working railway; designed to support an export-oriented economy and manufacturing, but like the proverbial prodigal son the country squandered a valuable inheritance.

Latest data from the Kenya Roads Board and the Kenya National Highways Authority shows that as at independence Kenya’s road network stood at 45,000 kilometres out of which about 2,000 were paved. As at 2009, 11,189 kilometres of road were paved.

Today the total road network stands at 177,800 kilometres. Despite the mix of fortunes it is not all gloomy. “There is still much to celebrate. We have done better than most other countries in the region,” says Dr Nyandemo.

“Kenya came second to South Africa in road quality among the countries we studied, but only 14 per cent of roads are paved. Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, suffers from massive congestion too,” says a logistics report by PwC.

The Thika Superhighway, construction of a series of bypasses, reviving of the railway and plans to upgrade the airport all happened under retired President Kibaki’s era.

After Thursday’s Golden Jubilee, attention shifts to other projects that are in the pipeline such as the Lamu Port and South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project.

Infrastructure spectrum

Launched in 2012, the second transport corridor targets the construction of railway, airports, roads, resort cities, a pipeline and a refinery that are expected to open up northern Kenya as a trade link to Ethiopia and South Sudan.

The standard gauge railway, that will link Nairobi to Malaba, and expansion of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Konza city are also expected to entrench Kenya’s status as a regional economic power house.

Last week President Uhuru Kenyatta broke ground on the JKIA greenfield terminal that will cost Sh55.6 billion. The terminal is expected to increase the airport’s capacity to 26 million from six million visitors per year.

That CNN rated JKIA as the sixth worst airport in the world in 2011 means that there is still a lot more work to be done across the entire infrastructure spectrum.