Passengers may be happy with the SGR, but importers are the big winners

This week saw the launch of the standard gauge railway (SGR) with President Uhuru Kenyatta taking a train ride from Mombasa to Nairobi along with Chinese executives, diplomats, school children and other dignitaries.

It is billed as independent Kenya’s largest infrastructure project, and its four-year construction has matched the duration of the Jubilee government and the standard gauge railway, with good reason, being celebrated as one of the deliverables that the government has championed, guided and delivered on.  

The standard gauge railway was launched in November 2013 at Changamwe to replace a British railway that has served Kenya and Uganda for 100 years.

It is hoped that the new railway will serve Kenya for another 100 years too, but some of its expectations are getting lost in translation, in many aspects. This could be a disconnect between the planners, users, buyers, operators, media and politicians.

The first misconception is that this is a railway for passengers. The standard gauge railway is meant for cargo, and while the government teases passengers with Ksh 700 fares to Mombasa, these are not the railway's main intended customers.

The standard gauge railway is meant to decongest our highways. Anyone who has recently driven between Mombasa and Nairobi or Nairobi to Nakuru and further west on weekends will attest to the congestion and long driving times, which lead to dangerous overtaking and accidents.

ONE MILLION CONTAINERS

The Port of Mombasa now handles 27 million metric tonnes a year, 23 million of which are imports. The old railway moved 1.6 million tonnes of that, and the new railway is expected to handle 5 million tonnes a year.

In 2014 one million containers passed through the Port of Mombasa. If a good chunk of those come to Nairobi, that’s about 1,000 trucks a day on the highway costing businesses Ksh 80,000 to 90.000 per container. 

But the new cargo rates published this week by Kenya Railways, now show that the SGR will move a container from the Port of Mombasa to the Inland Container Depot in Nairobi for just Ksh. 50,000, a 37 per cent reduction already and with the transport done in half the time.

That is the justification for the standard gauge railway.

This does not mean there is no place for passengers on the train. The old railway, which had a passenger service that ran untill it was discontinued in April 2017, served residents of small towns such as Konza, Emali, Sultan Hamud, and Voi. But most expectations are that 90 per cent of SGR revenue will be from cargo service

Where the train stopped, passengers would board with cargo and move up or down to other towns, or right to the middle of Nairobi or Mombasa. That is expected to continue.

The old railway and tracks are also not going to disappear with the launch of the standard gauge railway. There will be no displacement, and while people talk about the jobs lost, the standard gauge railway is currently only between Mombasa and Nairobi.

From Mombasa, cargo in containers still has to get to towns like Namanga, Thika, Nyeri, Nakuru, Eldoret, and on to Uganda Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and DRC. This will be done with trucks and some by the old railway.

HEADING TO UGANDA

Meanwhile Uganda seems ready for their standard gauge railway. The railway is still over 400 kilometers away and yet to be built to their borders, but the government there is creating awareness about the coming railway.

Uganda seems to have learnt from the controversy and speculation in Kenya and so issues like the justification for the standard gauge railway investment, project documents, citizen sensitisation, land valuation and compensation resettlement, and displacement are all being communicated rather more openly there.

They even published notices naming absentee landlords and asking them to contact project managers and verify their land ownership documents for compensation.

So the standard gauge railway is now here. With a lot of hastily translated Chinese maps, signs and staff to guide passengers, there will be some jokes in the coming days about Chinese language translations.

But with time, if we look back in five, ten, or a hundred years, how will we judge the standard gauge railway? Government officials say the standard gauge railway will repay its investment, many times over, for many decades and this will more than justify their initial short-term costs.

Also, at one time the East African Railways & Harbours was the largest commercial employer in the country. It will be interesting to see if the new railway does the same for this generation.

Twitter: @bankelele