Category: Railways
Why East Africa’s Next Railways Won’t be Built With Chinese Money
From Ethiopia to Kenya and soon Tanzania, thousands of kilometers of new railways are coming online. And if Tanzanian President John Magufuli is successful, Dar es Salaam will emerge as the hub of a hugely ambitious regional railway network that will stretch across half a dozen countries. ...
Scandal, Low Ticket Sales Plague Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway
Bad news keeps piling up for the multi-billion dollar Chinese-financed and constructed Standard Gauge Railway network, the centerpiece of President Uhuru Kenyatta's ambitious infrastructure development agenda. Ridership and cargo freight volumes are both coming in much lower than expected on several ...
Tanzania’s Drive to Become Regional Transport Hub Gets Boost From New SGR Deals With Burundi, DRC
Tanzania Transport Minister Isack Kamwelwe signed agreements with both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi to link up their future Standard Gauge Railway lines to Tanzania's proposed SGR. The 1,457km Tanzanian SGR line will connect inland East Africa from ...
New Documents Unveiled in Kenya’s Court of Appeals Puroportedly Reveal Massive SGR Over-Spending
New documents have emerged that reportedly reveal widespread corruption and over-spending in the building of the Chinese-financed and constructed Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya. These documents are part of the ongoing case in front of Kenya's Court of Appeals in a suit against the government led activist Okiya ...
How the Chinese-Financed Standard Gauge Railways in East Africa Marks a New Era of Government-led Infrastructure Development
The founding Dean of Strathmore Law School in Nairobi and a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Luis Franceschi, wrote a pair of compelling columns last month in the Daily Nation newspaper that serve as a kind of master class on the enormous legal and economic implications associated ...
Kenyan and Chinese Officials Commemorate the Launch of Cargo Service on the Standard Gauge Railway
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was joined Tuesday by a large delegation of Chinese officials to inaugurate new cargo service on the Mombasa to Naivasha line of the country's new Standard Gauge Railway. This new line is intended to transport goods from ...
Sino-Kenyan Railway Operator Afristar Challenges Allegations in Daily Nation Report
The Chinese-Kenyan joint venture company that runs operations for the new Standard Gauge Railway company, Afristar, forcefully rebutted recent allegations published last week in The Daily Nation newspaper that claimed that the SGR's Chinese contractor "refused to provide key information protected by the ...
Kenya’s Embattled SGR Suffers Major Setback as Burundi, DRC Opt for Tanzania Route to Port of Dar es Salaam
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's longheld dream of extending his $4.9 billion Chinese-financed Standard Gauge Railway across East Africa suffered a major setback this week as both Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both opted to go with Tanzania's SGR for direct access to the port ...
No One Should Be Surprised That a Major Chinese Aid Project is Being Built in an African Leader’s Hometown
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari led a groundbreaking ceremony earlier this week for a new $50 million transportation university in Daura, Katsina State. The primary objective of the new school will be to train Nigeria's railway engineers to operate a growing number of rail lines that the Chinese ...
China and Zimbabwe Have Negotiated for Years to Modernize Zim’s Decrepit Railway. Now It’s Time to Get Something Done.
Zimbabwean Filmmaker Zororo Makamba breaks down in easy-to-understand terms how the country's rail network has fallen into such a state of disrepair, despite years of efforts to revitalize it. Makamba argues that it's critical that the government work with Chinese and other partners to find a way to ...