Planned interventions by Kenya and Uganda to decongest the Malaba border post will greatly improve efficiency on the trade route served by the Port of Mombasa.
During a tour of the facility a week ago by Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen and his Ugandan counterpart Musa Ecweru, the ministers announced a raft of measures that the two governments would implement to improve operations at the Malaba One Stop Border Post.
The proposed developments include the installation of more scanners to speed up cargo clearance; opening up of alternative roads in the final stretch to Malaba on both sides of the border; expanding storage and parking facilities and investing in more railway wagons.
Malaba is a critical post on the Northern Corridor. On a typical day, it handles more than 1,000 cargo trucks, making it only second to Mombasa in the quantity of goods it processes. However, the post is prone to periodic, debilitating congestion, especially when the scanners used to monitor goods at the post break down.
Such is the monstrosity of the congestion that sometimes the traffic gridlocks stretch as far back as 70 kilometres on the Bungoma-Malaba road. Due to the narrowness of the existing main roads to Malaba, the two governments announced plans to build alternate routes into the town on both sides of the border.
There is also the planned construction of a separate lane for the hundreds of trucks that pass through the busy post on their way to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and from these territories into Kenya and eventually, the port city of Mombasa.
The two officials also visited the Kenya Railway Corporation’s marshalling yard at Malaba, and announced that the facility would be improved through the installation of cargo loaders, scanners and marshalling vehicles.
The yard serves the existing meter gauge railway, which is the alternative route for freight through the border town. Further, Kenya and Uganda are considering a proposal to have goods move seamlessly on the MGR line between the two countries before the standard gauge railway connection is completed.
Significantly, the facilities’ tour by the officials came following a meeting of East African Community Roads and Transport ministers in Kampala, during which the measures were agreed on. This joint approach shows that both countries are committed to upgrading cargo transport infrastructure, a factor that will materially improve the performance of the Northern Corridor as a trade route and its overall competitiveness against the Southern Corridor.
The former has great potential, already handling about 45 million tonnes of cargo, against the latter’s 20 million tonnes. For starters, the Dar es Salaam port has already implemented an ambitious $357 million (Sh49.7 billion) port improvement project that invested in both the hardware (infrastructure) and software (human resource capacity). Cargo handling through the Dar port is also more affordable than in Mombasa.
With the above measures, which have been framed as temporary, a superior solution is envisaged with the proposed extension of the SGR further into the hinterland, from its current final terminus at Naivasha. The SGR has already demonstrated its superiority in efficiently handling the transport of growing freight in and out of the region. Even at optimal capacity, the road route can only handle 10 million tonnes per year.
Currently, the SGR’s potential has not been fully realised as the movement of cargo on the line is truncated with a transition from the SGR to the MGR at Naivasha.
Uganda recently announced that it would start the construction of its SGR track from Malaba to Kampala this August, a development that would materially improve cargo haulage on the route, in terms of both speed and quantity. This is after it received funding from Standard Chartered Bank and procured the services of a firm to build the track.
On its part, Kenya plans to spend Sh2.1 trillion to extend the SGR line to Kisumu, Malaba and Isiolo, which if implemented, will greatly improve efficiency in cargo transport in the region. Specifically, the Naivasha-Kisumu-Malaba line will materially improve the performance of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala-Kigali trade route and its value proposition to shippers in the region.
The other planned lines will expand the catchment area for Kenyan ports, principally Lamu, to include parts of Ethiopia and South Sudan. This will be achieved through two feeder SGR lines – Isiolo to Moyale on the border with Ethiopia and Isiolo to Nakodok, a town on Kenya’s border with South Sudan.
The extension of the SGR to Malaba and Kampala would, to a great extent, fulfil the vision behind the tripartite agreement signed by Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda in 2014, whose aim was to ensure the seamless and efficient movement of goods between the port of Mombasa and the hinterland it serves.
Communication specialist in the railway transport and logistics sector
