Industry News

Kenya on the Verge of Its Biggest Construction Boom

The boom will see Kenya joining the list of the fastest growing economies in Africa.

Updated on

March 10, 2015

Workers build house — Workers at a construction site in Kisumu. PHOTO | FILE

Kenya is on the verge of its biggest construction boom in many years – with tens of multi-billion-shilling infrastructure projects fuelling the country’s economic growth.

Most of these works are spread across projects in rail, roads, ports, energy, oil, and gas.

The World Bank’s Kenya Economic Update has indicated that sustained infrastructure investment and falling global oil prices will see the economy grow seven per cent in 2017.

The World Bank said that heavy spending on infrastructure projects such as the standard gauge railway would also see the Kenyan economy joining the list of the fastest-growing economies in Africa.

Data from a survey by global consulting firm Deloitte show that 60 per cent of large infrastructure projects in Kenya in 2014 were mainly in the transport sector while projects in the energy sector took up 37 per cent of recorded projects.

The Deloitte African Construction Trends Report 2014, released on Tuesday in Nairobi, examined projects in energy, transport, mining, healthcare, and real estate in Africa with values of more than Sh4.55 billion.

The survey found that there were 51 such projects spread in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ethiopia worth Sh5.5 trillion, which was a 55 per cent drop from 93 projects worth Sh6.2 trillion recorded in 2013.

“While there seems to have been a dip in current activity, there are a large number of significant projects in the planning phase that have not yet reached financial close and are thus not yet reflected in the statistics of projects under construction,” Mark Smith, the head of infrastructure and capital projects at Deloitte East Africa, told reporters in Nairobi.

Some of the mega-projects being undertaken in Kenya include a standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (Lapsset), and the Greenfield Terminal at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi.

Others include the much-awaited Dongu Kundu Free Port, the Sh900 billion Konza technology city, and the Kenya Railways Golf Cities, among others.

The government is planning to construct and rehabilitate 5,500km of roads through a public-private partnership (PPP) and another 20km of new roads in every constituency by 2017.