The African Development Bank (AfDB) has set aside $1.4 million (Sh175 million) for a feasibility study on a proposed highway from Kisumu to Kakira in Uganda.
The money, which has been dispensed to the East African Community (EAC), will be used to assess the viability of the 256km four-lane expressway that will run from Kisumu to Kakira—a town in Uganda’s border district of Jinja.
“The funding from the African Development Bank would be used to conduct feasibility studies on the 256km multinational Kisumu-Kisian-Busia/Kakira-Malaba-Busitema-Busia expressway,” says EAC Deputy Sec. Gen. for Planning and Infrastructure Steven Mlote.
According to Mlote, the project will involve rehabilitation of the existing two-lane single carriageway to bitumen standard, and the upgrading of the same into a two-lane double carriageway over a 104km stretch.
Kisumu bypass
The 104km segment will run from Kisian in Kisumu to Busia town. The project will also involve the construction of 11km road between Kisian and Kisumu bypass.
At the same time, another 127km road will be built from Jinja to Malaba. This will be linked to a 20km stretch that will run along the border to Busia town.
The Kisumu-Uganda expressway will be a continuation of the $1.48 billion (Sh185 billion) Kampala-Jinja expressway, which is scheduled for completion by 2025.
The expressway is part of improvements on the Northern Corridor – which provides landlocked East African nations faster access to Mombasa Port.
Mombasa-Kigali expressway
It forms part of the Mombasa-Kigali expressway that was prioritized at the EAC Heads of States Retreat on Infrastructure Development in Feb. 2018 in Kampala.
Construction of the six-lane Mombasa-Kigali expressway, which is inspired by the N1 highway that runs from Cape Town (South Africa) to Harare (Zimbabwe), was scheduled to start in 2016.
That did not happen and the project now remains without a start date.
1,600km-highway
The Kenya National Highways Authority (Kenha), in a charter agreed upon by 13 state agencies, had committed to work with road agencies from Uganda and Rwanda in building the 1,600km-highway within three to 10 years.
As that waits, a private concessionaire is set to be procured for a period of 30 years – including an eight-year construction period – on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis under a PPP model for the Kisumu-Uganda expressway.
Motorists will be expected to pay a toll to access the Kampala expressway.
