Category: Railways

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Kenyan truck drivers took to the streets yesterday to protest against the government's directive that requires all-cargo to be transported by the new Standard Gauge Railway. Contrary to some of the previous demonstrations, the truckers this time clearly linked the government's decision to Chinese influence, or "colonization" ...

After failing to secure a $2.2 billion loan from the Chinese to build a new Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to replace the country's decrepit century-old colonial-era railway, Uganda is now looking to secure funding for a much more modest refurbishment of its 1,266km system. ...

Two days after the high-profile launch of Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway line between Nairobi and Naivasha, the trains are running largely empty as very few passengers can actually get to the stations due to the poor condition of the roads.  Nearby ...

Dr. Zhengli Huang is a Research Associate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. She's an expert on China's impact on African urban development and has experience in ...

Kenyan TV channels broke into regularly scheduled programming for live coverage of Wednesday's SGR launch. A lot of the initial reporting, particularly during the live broadcast, was generally positive but as the day went on the tone on several networks began to change. KTN and NTV, in ...

This week saw the launch of the newest phase of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR,) connecting the port in Mombasa to the Rift Valley town of Naivasha. The Mombasa-Naivasha section of the SGR cost $1.5 billion. It connects to the initial phase, between Nairobi and Mombasa, ...

The Chinese-financed and constructed Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya is an extremely polarizing issue for many people in Kenya and throughout East Africa. Critics of President Uhuru Kenyatta see it as a financial boondoggle that will never pay for itself, leaving future generations to pick up the ...