Project News

How Uhuru Was Forced to Reroute Naivasha-Kisumu SGR

The line was initially planned to pass through Nakuru from Naivasha.

Updated on

September 16, 2023

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration was forced to reroute the Naivasha-Kisumu standard gauge railway (SGR) from the Central Rift Valley corridor to escape a hefty land compensation bill that had been quoted by land cartels.

The extended line to Malaba through Kisumu was initially set to pass through Nakuru from Naivasha to allow shipping of cargo by SGR trains to the new city.

But when the plan was made public, politically influential elite – and land-grabbing cartels – went on a land acquisition spree along the route in anticipation of hefty compensation payments.

So powerful was this group of people that they prepared a compensation budget – in tens of billions of shillings – and presented it to the government for approval.

The government was taken aback since it had only set aside a small budget for paying off landowners who would have been displaced by the railway.

President Kenyatta instructed his team to explore a viable alternative.

On September 18, 2015, the Cabinet approved a new route – from Naivasha through Narok to Bomet and up to Kisumu via Yala to Bumula and Malaba.

The radical measure stunned the land barons who were now left holding huge tracks of ‘useless’ land along the semi-arid Central Rift Valley corridor.

The project, however, did not take off due to lack of funds.

The government had approached China for a loan, and the talks were running smoothly until September 2018 when China abruptly declined to approve the loan.

This was shocking since Kenya and China Communications Construction Company had a month earlier agreed to build the railway, with only the finer details of the deal set to be finalised weeks later during President Kenyatta’s tour of China.

Kenya later announced that it would not proceed with the Naivasha-Malaba SGR, and would instead rehabilitate the existing metre gauge railway to Kisumu.

However, in January this year, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed optimism over a possible reopening of talks on the botched SGR funding deal with Kenya.

The new William Ruto-led administration has also expressed its willingness to revive the stalled project, subject to the availability of funds.