Looking into the foreseeable future, railway could be become the main bulk cargo moving means from the Coast to the inland and back, if sustained efforts by the Kenya government are anything to go by.
For the last three to four years, the state has made blockbuster investments and moves that position railway as the favourable and comparatively cheaper mode of moving bulk goods across the far-apart borders of the country and even outside it.
A recent visit to the newly built Naivasha Inland Container Depot situated near Mai Mahiu found that the state is already doing a dry run for transshipment of cargo after the infrastructure that links the Standard Gauge Railway and the Meter Gauge Railway got laid out. This allows direct SGR cargo freighting from the port city of Mombasa to the ICD.
“The end-game is to postion Kenya as the main cargo handling hub in the region, serving Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and part of Ethiopia, among other markets,” said Kenya Railways managing director Philip Mainga.
The government has already revamped and linked the old meter-gauge railway line to the SGR to cut the clearing tariffs and reduce bureaucracies in order to attract traders from neighbouring countries.
Mainga recently took journalists on a tour of the Naivasha-based dry port to witness the transshipment of import containers moved from the port of Mombasa to the Inland Container Deport using SGR onto a meter gauge line for onward rail transportation to Malaba.
At the port, countries in the region are allocated desks with their names plastered on them, perhaps to entice them to engage the port.
And to cut through the bureaucratic red tape in the import and export businesses, the clearing agencies, including KRA, Kenya Ports of Authority and the Kenya Bureau of Standards, have been stationed at the port to ensure expeditious handling and clearing in the transshipment process.
In fact, an upbeat Mainga told journalists the tour would be themed, “[The] new Naivasha SGR-MGR link cuts Kenya-Uganda distance by two days.”
And to demonstrate the seriousness of the state’s drive to bring regional countries into the loop, President Uhuru Kenyatta toured the dry port on January 12 alongside Ugandan Lt General David Muhoozi, inspecting the progress of works and operations, the son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Uhuru also proceeded to Kisumu to inspect the Lake Victoria port and then to Mbita, inspecting other state projects.
Apart from ensuring the SGR line reaches the Naivasha facility, the state also revamped the 465km MGR running from Naivasha to Malaba.
The government is out to ensure movement of cargo through rail system is efficient, reliable and safe, and that is why the rehabilitation of the 465km railway is a landmark for us
TIME CUT DOWN
And in the estimation of the state, the sum total of the development will see cargo clearing and moving it from Mombasa to Malaba take only 28 hours, down from seven days as is currently the case.
It previously took three days or 72 hours to transport cargo from Mombasa to Malaba using the old MGR.
“But with the SGR link from Mombasa to Naivasha, it will now take only 28 hours for cargo to travel from Mombasa to Malaba by rail. This means cargo travel time by rail has been cut by 48 hours across the same distance,” Mainga said.
“From Mombasa to Naivasha, the train will take nine hours. Once in Naivasha, it will take between 30 minutes and one hour to transship cargo from SGR to MGR. After transshipment, it will take 18 hours from Naivasha to Malaba. At no point will cargo touch the ground throughout its time in the Kenyan territory.”
If the figures by the state are correct, the new SGR-MGR link will move cargo six times faster by rail than by road from Mombasa to Malaba.
It currently takes about seven days to transport cargo by road from Mombasa to Malaba. With the new rail link, the same distance will be covered in 28 hours, meaning that for every trip a truck does from Mombasa to Malaba, a train will have done six trips.
To make this hefty ambition a reality, the corporation chief said the state plans to install an automated transshipment machinery at the ICD so the containers can be moved from SGR to MGR train in less than 30 minutes. This should be ready by end of March, he said.
Currently, the reacher trucks are the ones used to move the cargo containers from the arriving SGR trains onto the meter gauge train waiting to snail its way to Kisumu onwards to Malaba.
The MD said the revamping of the 465km of old meter-gauge railway rehabilitated from Longonot to Malaba is a game changer.
Beside this line is the Nairobi-Nanyuki one, also rehabilitated at a cost of about $30 million (Sh3 billion) to spur economic activities in the agriculture-rich Central Kenya region.
The 240km Nairobi-Nanyuki line has been idle for more than four decades. It was set to be linked to the SGR to ensure products from the region are moved directly to the Mombasa port for onward exporting.
“The government is out to ensure movement of cargo through rail system is efficient, reliable and safe, and that is why the rehabilitation of the 465km railway is a landmark for us,” Mainga said.
He said the state has engaged Uganda to work on its lines and link it with the Kenyan one at Malaba border point all the way to Kampala to ensure seamless shipping of cargo from Mombasa to Kampala.
“We have also struck a deal with South Sudan to ensure they pick their cargo at the Naivasha dry port to save them costs and cut out time spent in the process,” he said.
The direct freighting started but at a slow pace in 2020, with two daily trains hauling up to 108 20-foot equivalent units (teus) and a minimum of 70 teus.
The Naivasha dry port has a two million tonnes annual capacity and is intended to reduce congestion at the Nairobi ICD and Mombasa port, cut the number of trucks on the roads and save costs.
With less time spent on the road, congestion at the Malaba border point eased and less costs incurred, the benefits of the transition far outweigh the losses that could result
ENTICING CHARGES
As part of the grand scheme, the government has also reviewed train shipment costs to entice business people to shun the road trucks.
Charges for clearing and shipping a 20-foot container using the railway line will cost $860 dollars, down from $2,000 currently charged on road shipment.
Explaining the development, Mainga said traders will save more than $1,200 per container if they choose to use rail over road to transport cargo from Mombasa to Malaba.
“And this is because it costs $2,000 (about Sh200,000) per container to transport cargo by road. But by using the new SGR-MGR rail link, it will cost $860 or around Sh90,000 to transport the same cargo from Mombasa to Malaba. This means that for every Sh2 spent transporting cargo from the trip by road, Sh1 will be spent by railway.”
To actualise the grand dream, the government is out to foster partnerships that range from between state corporations to between countries to maximise utility of the rail and squeeze out as much potential as possible.
For example, the presence of the Ugandan general, understood to be President Museveni’s personal representative at the tour, signified that the neighbouring landlocked country is in the loop.
Mainga had said they have bilaterally engaged with the equivalent of the Kenya Railway Authority in Uganda over rehabilitation of their lines and link it with the Malaba border point for seamless shipping.
In the country, corporation to corporation partnership was struck early this year between Kenya Railway and the tea development agency KTDA to have the latter transport tea via the SGR from Nairobi to the port of Mombasa.
Under the partnership, tea from KTDA-managed factories will be transported from the tea-growing counties to the Nairobi Freight Terminal.
The tea will then be loaded onto Kenya Railways wagons and subsequently transported to the port.
In its maiden moving of the tea cargo using rail in the said partnership, KTDA said it transported 31 containers of packed tea, which translates to 800 tonnes.
At the partnership unveiling ceremony, KTDA Holdings chairman David Ichoho said his entity is piloting 20,000 packs for rail shipping per week as it streamlines the process for a full migration from road to rail transport.
“Every year, we move about 300 million kilos of processed tea and we expect these large volumes will mean greater savings for farmers as we progressively migrate to rail,” he said.
The agency is also eying setting up a tea handling facility next to the Nairobi ICD based in Embakasi to handle all tea packages for onward transportation by railway.
Observers have praised the move to have corporations dealing in heavy cargo migrate from heavy trucks on road to SGR, saying it will reduce traffic snarl-ups often involving the trucks.
Getting trucks off the road also ensures the durability of the roads as their damaging effects are removed.
Asked about the job loss concerns that could be precipitated when the trucks are shunned, Mainga said the focus of the state is efficiency of the system.
“With less time spent on the road, congestion at the Malaba border point eased and less costs incurred, the benefits of the transition far outweigh the losses that could result,” the MD said.
It is not clear, however, if the explanation assuages the anxiety of truck drivers and related workers, who could potentially lose their jobs if the transition to rail from road for moving cargo is significantly adopted.
