By Prof. Vincent Ongore -KDRTV News Denver, Colorado
One of the enduring legacies of the last two regimes of presidents Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta is huge investments in physical infrastructure, particularly road and railway networks. Kenyans, particularly those in Nairobi and its environs, and to a small extent other major urban areas, have celebrated modern roads not so much because of their expected socio-economic benefits to the populace, but rather because they were a rarity during the Moi regime It is not uncommon to hear Nairobi residents exclaim that they are now living like Europeans and Americans on account of Thika Road and the 27.1 kilometer Expressway that runs from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) to Jame Gichuru Highway in Westlands. However, what some uncritical Nairobi residents seem to be totally oblivious to is the opportunity cost of building these roads instead of paying attention to the more important ones, and other sectors of the economy.
Mombasa Road and the Nairobi-Naivasha-Malaba Highway, for example, are the economic nerve centers of Kenya in terms of international business with its neighbours, yet, surprisingly, Kenya’s infrastructure expansion and development plan seem to have given them a wide berth. These two major highways are the links between the Port of Mombasa and a number of Kenya’s trade partners within the Eastern African region.
The Port of Mombasa is a key entry and exit point for Kenya’s imports and exports, and plays a vital role in the country’s economy. In 2023, for instance, this port handled 56.8 percent of the country’s revenue. Equally, Mombasa Port is a major gateway for Eastern Africa.
As an illustration, Uganda’s share of imports and exports currently amounts to about 82 percent of all transit cargo through this Mombasa Port. The Nairobi-Naivasha-Malaba highway is a major transport corridor not only for Kenya’s export and import goods, but also for other landlocked countries within the Eastern African region, including, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
For Kenya to enhance the competitiveness of the Mombasa Port, one of its priority areas should be to upgrade motorability of these two roads. The current state of these roads is pathetic. In the just concluded festive period, several motorists spent more than one day between Nairobi and Nakuru, a distance of 160 kilometers, magnifying the inability of that stretch of the road between Nairobi and Naivasha to accommodate increased volumes of motor traffic.
With each hour of delay on the road, traders incur incalculable costs and missed market opportunities. So, as Nairobians celebrate their Expressway and Thika Highway, it is obviously lost on them that many Kenyans are stuck in traffic snarl-ups, sometimes stretching for over 50 kilometers, on one of the country’s most important roads. The idea of building Standard Guage Railways and expanding road networks to ease transport problems in Kenya was a great thought until some unscrupulous government officials saw it as an opportunity for rent-seeking, ethnic gratification and enhancing political capital. Pundits have argued that Kenya’s major infrastructure developments have not only been skewed in favor of Nairobi and its environs, but have equally been some of the most expensive undertakings in the world, at least by World Bank estimates. A short comparison using SGR costs for Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia should suffice. Kenya built its non-electric SGR from Mombasa to Nairobi, a distance of 483.6 kilometers, at US$3.6 billion. This translates to about US$7.4 million per kilometer. The train takes about 9 hours to cover the 483.6 kilometer distance between Nairobi and Mombasa. Madaraka Express passenger train covers the same distance in about 6 hours.
In comparison, Tanzania’s electric train, part of the SGR initiative, was built at a cost of US$14 billion, translating to US$5.4 million per kilometer. The SGR is a 2,561 kilometer railway that connects Tanzania’s main port, Dar es Salaam, to the Burundi border. The SGR is expected to boost domestic and regional trade, and significantly reduce travel costs and time, compared to the old narrow gauge railway. It takes under about 4 hours to travel from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, a distance of 451.7 kilometers. On its part, Ethiopia spent US$ 3.4 billion to build a 751.7 kilometer SGR from the capital, Addis Abbaba, to Djibouti. This translates to US$4.5 million per kilometer. In a nutshell, it cost the Kenyan taxpayer US$967.2 million more (additional US$2 million per kilometer) to construct the 483.6 kilometer non-electric SGR from Mombasa to Nairobi than it cost Tanzanian taxpayers to build an electric SGR for a similar distance.
If we take it that building Tanzania’s SGR was cost-effective, then Kenya wasted at least US$967.2 million (KES 123 billion) just to improve on its existing railwayline between Mombasa and Nairobi. All these costs have since been passed on to the taxpayers, hence increasing the tax burden on already tax-fatigued Kenyans, and exercabating the country’s external debt situation.
The much anticipated faster movement of goods and people at lower costs has not been achieved either. On the contrary, in November 2023, Kenya Railways increased fares on the SGR, arguably to help cover rising fuel costs and meet debt repayments. Consequently, the cost of a journey from Mombasa to Nairobi increased from US$6 to US$10 in the economy class, and from US$19 to US$30 in first class compartments.
CS Mbadi has recently decried the hurried manner in which inordinate financial allocations for infrastructure developments in the Central Kenya region were made by the last regime at the expense of the rest of Kenya. The CS promised to put in place the necessary steps to correct this apparent injustice through the budgetary processes. One thing that may have escaped CS Mbadi’s attention is the fact that the skewed allocation of development resources has not only been a feature of Kenya’s planning practice since independence, but it was entrenched in the country’s development philosophy at the very outset.
The Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965 entitled “African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya” set the ground for preferential treatment of certain regions at the expense of others. The most offending section of the paper provided that “to make the economy as a whole grow as fast as possible, development money should be invested where it would yield the largest increase in output.”
This strategy, which was erroneously lauded as the panacea to Kenya’s development problems, favored and encouraged investment of public resources in regions with agricultural potential, such as those where tea and coffee were grown. Typically, these were areas where those who bestrode Kenya’s political sanctum like a colossus in the nascent years of independence came from.
This policy resulted in institutionalized marginalization of many parts of the country, particularly the arid and semi-arid areas which were thought not to have the potential to make any meaningful contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In pursuing this flawed policy, Kenya missed out on opportunities to grow its livestock industry, and exploit natural resources such as wind power, hydroelectric potential and mineral resources, which were abundant within its borders.
To make matters worse, the returns on the public investments in the so-called “high potential areas” were never applied to uplift other regions, thus resulting in lop-sided development and inequality that the country has been grappling with for the last six decades.
During the just concluded Piny Luo Cultural Festival celebrations held in Siaya, CS Mbadi revisited the much frowned-upon decision of the Uhuru Kenyatta regime to terminate the construction of SGR at Naivasha. The former president had attributed this decision to lack of adequate resources to extend the SGR from Naivasha to Malaba border. What he could not explain convincingly, however, was why the government opted to spend US$ 668 million (KES 84.836 billion at current exchange rates) to build a 27.1 kilometer Expressway from JKIA to Westlands, instead of extending the SGR from Naivasha to Malaba to facilitate regional trade. Buolding the Expressway was clearly an adverse selection, and probably laced with some moral harzard. CS Mbadi interpreted this decision as having been motivated by a determination to exclude some regions from development. He promised to strongly consider the possibility of extending the SGR to Malaba, as a matter of development priority. All these shinnanigans aside, I think it was a very bad decision for Kenya to prioritize big investments in physical infrastructure over social amenities such as education, electricity, clean and piped water, health, fibre optics and food security.
The government justified the huge investments in physical infrastructure development on the basis that it facilitated movement of factors of production, which in turn enhanced the capacity of the economy to produce goods and services to grow the country’s GDP. While this argument is plausible, the government’s approach of concentrating infrastructure in selected areas such as Nairobi and its environs, that were already relatively better served, undermines its stated intention of promoting movement of factors of production to where they are most needed. Most rural areas have conspicuously been left out of the road and railway networks.
The money could have had a much bigger impact on livelihoods had the government targeted enablers for improved value chains. For example, supporting farmers by providing certified seeds, mechanization, fertilizers, herbicides, irrigation, storage facilities and food processing would have improved the food security situation, household incomes of rural folks across the country, and education of their children. Similarly, investment in rural electrification would have transformed rural villages into miniature workshops and factories, and tremendously improved their incomes.
Investment in training of nurses, clinical officers and midwives to work with communities, and providing basic drugs for common diseases are a sure way of reducing infant mortality in rural and remote areas to acceptable levels. Currently, Kenya faces huge disparities in infant mortality rates where some counties such as Tana River, Mandera and others in remote areas lose up to 100 infants out of 1000 live births while other counties like Kiambu have infant survival rates of up to 97 percent. Since independence, Kenya has consistently misfired with regard to its development priorities. It is high time the country prioritized human development over brick and motar. Happy New Year 2025.
Professor Ongore is a Public Finance Scholar
