Policy plans are sometimes announced in Kenya, but they have never proven to have implemented substance. After the fall of the Moi regime, a much-heralded Strategy for Revitalising Agriculture was announced in 2004. It delivered little before being abandoned in 2010.
A grand plan of the current president promised to increase the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) to 15 or 20 percent by 2022, with 500,000 or one million new manufacturing jobs created.
Different targets appear on different pages of the presidential web site, perhaps an indication of the lack of seriousness the promise. In the event, according to World Bank data, the manufacturing share of Kenya’s GDP fell from 10.7 percent in 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta’s first year of office, to 7.5 percent in 2019, a record low in the independence era.
One, real-world indicator of the state of industrial policy in Kenya is a sprawling, 2,000 hectare dustbowl with a few small buildings 60 kilometres south of Nairobi.
This is ‘Konza Technopolis,’ a high-tech production center and suburb announced in 2008, with a master plan approved in 2013. Today, the only real evidence of progress at Konza is a website with various digital images of what was hoped for.
The Kenyan government’s inability to deliver on its economic policy agendas may have contributed to its interest in infrastructure projects outsourced to Chinese firms.
A journey along the country’s logistical spine, from Mombasa via Nairobi to Eldoret, reveals a large number of Chinese road projects currently underway.
Around Mombasa, there are several operational sites including the Dongo Kundu southern bypass with four bridges that will connect the route south to Tanzania to the main Nairobi road.
On the south side of Nairobi, the first phase of a planned expressway to Mombasa, currently contracted as far as Machakos 40 km from Nairobi, is under construction. Within the city, there are several other projects.
In the north-west of the capital, along Waiyaki Way, the 27km Nairobi Expressway, some of which is elevated, will connect the north-west of the city to the international airport in the east; construction is at full throttle.
A second route north-west out of Nairobi via Ruaka and Ndenderu has a Chinese-financed and constructed road in progress. Around Nairobi, there are several more ongoing Chinese road construction projects.
Konza Technopolis: Project Renderings and Real Photos. Source: konza.go.ke
THE MAU MAU UPRISING
In 1948, the Kenya African Union (KAU), led by future national hero Jomo Kenyatta, sent a delegation to the British Parliament to request the repeal of a law that stripped Africans of the most fertile lands.
While the KAU sought to act «within the rules», another organization, which the British named «Mau Mau», chose terrorist methods to fight white colonizers.
The British, unsurprisingly, portrayed them as bloodthirsty savages practicing brutal religious rituals and mass killings of whites and Kenyan collaborators. In contrast, many Kenyans viewed the Mau Mau movement as a just anti-colonial uprising, albeit with elements of «ethnic distinctiveness».
At one point, the positions of the KAU and Mau Mau began to converge. A «Kenyan Parliament» was established, comprising 40 Mau Mau field commanders. By the 1950s, a large-scale guerrilla war had erupted.
The British responded to the «black terror» with «white terror», using tactics refined during the Boer War. Colonial forces systematically cleared districts of Mau Mau influence. Between 300,000 and 500,000 Africans disloyal to the empire were sent to concentration camps.
The British systematically employed the most brutal forms of torture and execution. Reports suggest that Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of U.S. President Barack Obama, was severely injured during an interrogation in 1949.
Today, it is difficult to distinguish truth from «black legend» in the UK’s information war against the Mau Mau. While the Mau Mau reportedly killed 32 white settlers and 49 Indians, estimates of African deaths range from 11,000 to 300,000.
The exact numbers are hard to verify, as many British documents remain classified. However, several lawsuits from surviving victims of rape and torture by British soldiers have been heard in London courts in recent years.
Suspected Kikuyu Tribe Members were detained in a British government internment camp during the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952. Photo: gettyimages.com
Editorial Team
Three hundred kilometers north of Mombasa, at Manda Bay near Lamu, the Kenyan government engaged China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) in a US$480m contract to build the first three of 32 planned berths at a new port it claims opened a first berth in May.
The facility, in a remote part of the country, is part of the grandiose Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET), designed to link the economies of three countries to Lamu, which requires large additional investments in road networks.
In April 2021, the government in Nairobi announced it has signed with CCCC for 453km of highway construction, including a 257km link north-west from Lamu to Garissa, at a cost of US$166m.
Much the biggest, and most controversial, Chinese project is Kenya’s new Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). The link from Mombasa to Nairobi cost a reported US$3.6bn and an extension to Naivasha, 110km north-west of Nairobi, a further US$1.5bn.
By joining the Huxley friends club, you support philosophy, science and art
The logic of the investment was to reduce freight costs, and accelerate freight times, all along the key logistical route through Kenya to Uganda and the rest of Central Africa. However, this does not seem, so far, to have happened.
While shipping costs per container on the Mombasa to Nairobi section, which opened to freight in 2018, are similar to road haulage, the addition of depot charges and the cost of moving containers from the railway to final destinations increased costs by up to 50 percent.
China’s Exim Bank terms for the loans for the line required guarantees of minimum container volumes which in turn led the Kenyan government to compel all inbound containers destined for the Nairobi region to use the rail service.
Despite this, the line has posted substantial losses – US$200m (KSh21.7bn) from inception to May 2020, according to the Ministry of Transport. In 2019, China decided not to provide the further US$4.9bn loans required to complete the connection to Uganda.
New Railway Built by Chinese Companies Source: afrikashorisonter.dk
It remains unclear what the outcome of the rail project will be. At Naivasha, an Inland Container Depot has been constructed for container transfer to trucks but is not yet operational.
At the same time, a 24km link line is being built by Chinese contractors to connect the SGR to the old, colonial metre-gauge railway (MGR), which Chinese firms have been contracted, along with the Kenyan military, to refurbish.
At one site in Eldoret in March, a small team of Chinese was overseeing the reshaping of colonial-era railway sleepers with an imported stamping machine.
BRITAIN BIDS FAREWELL BUT DOESN’T LEAVE
Despite successfully suppressing anti-colonial uprisings in Kenya, it became evident that the British could not hold onto the colony. In 1963, Kenya gained independence but remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Today, this «Global Britain» includes 53 countries with a combined population of 2.4 billion people. Most of these countries are former British colonies, with 18 of them located in Africa. The importance of Africa in the UK’s foreign strategy continues to grow.
For instance, following the Brexit referendum, the UK’s Foreign Office introduced a new position: Minister for Africa. Annually, Britain allocates 0.7% of its GDP to aid Africa.
To support positive trade dynamics, the Commonwealth Development Corporation was established with a budget of €7 billion. However, the British make little effort to hide that all aid programs for African countries are designed primarily to benefit the UK and create additional opportunities for British companies.
Kenya exemplifies such opportunities: over 300 British companies operate in the country; 56% of Kenyan tea is exported to the UK; and in 2017, 168,000 British tourists visited Kenya.
Editorial Team
The Ugandan government announced in 2021 that it will also refurbish its stretch of the historic MGR. What this means for freight costs, however, is impossible to say. Containers will have to be moved between rail bogies on different gauge tracks.
The temptation for the Kenyan government to force containers to use the two-gauge route in order to recoup its vast investment may be difficult to resist, leading to monopoly pricing.
However, if freight costs do not fall across Kenya and into Central Africa, the economic logic of the rail project will be defeated. Kenya already runs a trade deficit of around six percent of GDP, and higher freight costs will only increase the export shortfall.
Kenya already has a trade deficit of approximately six percent of its GDP, and higher transportation costs will only widen the export gap. A 2013 World Bank report stating that the SGR (Standard Gauge Railway) project lacked economic viability appears to have been validated.
Editorial Team
