Kenya has a well-developed, albeit uneven, transportation infrastructure that is superior to those of its neighbors. Nairobi is the largest city between Cairo and Johannesburg and serves as a transportation center for Eastern and Central Africa. Despite ongoing equipment inadequacies, inefficiency, and corruption, the Port of Mombasa is the region’s most important deep-water port, providing the shipping needs of more than a dozen countries. The Port of Mombasa has been undergoing considerable expansion and rehabilitation to address these problems.
According to the EAC’s Corridor Diagnostic Study, the Northern Corridor, which is anchored by the Port of Mombasa, will require $2.1 billion in investment, while the Central Corridor, which is served by the Port of Dar es Salaam, will require $2 billion.
Regional integration is a major driver of the sector’s expansion. Various regional initiatives include the $23 billion “Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport” (LAPSSET) multimodal transport corridor, which aims to better integrate Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan by connecting to a new port in Lamu, Kenya. LAPSSET will feature a new standard gauge railway, motorways, and an oil pipeline, providing a new export outlet for landlocked South Sudan and Ethiopia while also reducing Kenya’s reliance on the congested port of Mombasa. Overall, the region requires $20 billion to update its transportation infrastructure, which includes road and rail renovations, airport and port growth, and a revamp of the bureaucracy at border crossings, which can cause trade delays. According to the World Bank, Kenya will need to invest $4 billion per year over the next decade to close its infrastructure gap. However, in order to reduce the government’s debt burden, increased private sector participation through PPPs is required in the transportation infrastructure sector. To entice investors, the National Treasury has enhanced the legal framework governing PPPs and selected a number of infrastructure projects that can be implemented as PPPs through the PPP Unit. Kenya is therefore ripe for foreign investment in transportation infrastructure, Gambari Group facilitates investment opportunities in the construction industry and undertakes such projects from start to finish.
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