| dc.description.abstract | The structural gap in transport infrastructure is not only a serious handicap to growth and
poverty reduction in Kenya but to the entire Eastern Africa region at large. Transport
connectivity has a direct link to any country’s competitiveness since it weighs on the cost of
doing business and living. Kenya’s former President Mwai Kibaki invested heavily in the
development of infrastructure in order to encourage economic growth. President Uhuru
Kenyatta’s manifesto during the 2013 general elections campaign pledged to sustain the
development of infrastructure to improve the country’s competitiveness in the external
environment1.
Kenya has continuously played a leading role in the region due to its strategic location on
the East African coast. For a long time it has been one of the most important outposts for the
transcontinental trade between Europe, the Indian sub-continent, the Arab world and the Far
East. It has also been the gateway for many countries in the hinterland and landlocked, with a
relatively well developed transport infrastructure. Kenya is the transport hub of East Africa with
its capital Nairobi as the base for an extensive regional trucking business, international airlines,
and airfreight services, among other ventures. Greater regional integration will further strengthen
its position as a hub, but with the rising regional trade volumes, inadequacy in infrastructure is a
major impediment to greater integration.
The purpose of this study is to examine Kenya’s transport infrastructural development
through the assessment of strengths, opportunities, challenges and the proposed projects to either
enhance the existing system or mitigate the infrastructural gap towards more connectivity,
mobility and reduced costs. Up on realization of optimum levels of economic and social
connectivity as a result of an upgraded transport system in Kenya, greater Eastern Africa
regional integration will be a reality.
In order to cut the region’s over-reliance on Kenya’s existing port of Mombasa, the
recently commissioned Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project,
among other initiatives aims at intensifying trade and opening up northern Kenya and
surroundings, a vast area whose enormous economic potential has not been fully tapped because
of infrastructural challenges. | en |
