I drove down to the Coast recently where I was a guest in a friend’s family villa for 3 days at Vipingo Ridge in Kilifi. The villa was my wife’s idea to celebrate my birthday and also get in a few days of golf and R&R. The villa is a modern 5 bedroom all en-suite place with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi and set in a well landscaped garden all fit for a king and his queen! We were well taken care of by the resident cook, housekeeper and gardener during our stay clearly more than eager to have visitors whom they could take care of. That’s a story for another day though!!
We always prefer to drive to the coast otherwise you are forced to hire a car for the duration of your stay so as to get around or worse still use a taxi cab at horrendous rates since taxis in Mombasa are so expensive. The drive down is an exercise in infinite patience and driving skill as you navigate the 500 odd kilometers or so of Mombasa Road from Nairobi competing with the heavy commercial vehicles transporting goods and commodities to and from various East African countries like DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda & Burundi along with the long distance passenger buses racing to their destinations to pick up yet more passengers for the return journey from whence they set off.
Unlike other times we have driven to and from the Coast, this time there were few personal vehicles on the road and no tourist vans suggesting that Mombasa has taken a beating from the terrorism activities witnessed there over the past few months where hotels are struggling in terms of business…………..or most tourists are choosing to fly!
What struck me the most as we travelled down (and back) was the amount of ongoing projects along the route all seemingly geared towards the standard gauge rail project whose first phase is scheduled for completion in 2017 and whose construction was touted to commence in October 2014. Well folks I am happy to say that there is indeed some action happening on the ground in this regard.
I am sure that any project of such magnitude would have serious logistics in place to ensure that the tight timelines are met from land compensation issues, materials supplies, human resource needs, heavy equipment sourcing, security and so forth. This is evident wherever they have set up some camp or another along the entire route as they also create access roads and construct prefabricated structures and other necessities for the comfort and safety of their assets. A lot of heavy construction equipment is evident in many of the camps, possibly the main central supply camps to other smaller camps/work sites within a specified area. So as others choose to play politics with this very important project, stuff is definitely going on!!
We could also not help noticing the sheer volume of flatbed trucks laden with all sorts of heavy construction equipment as we drove to the Coast. Whether these are solely for the standard gauge rail project or for other projects across the country is not certain, but one thing is clear, the levels of investment in heavy construction equipment is impressive, as well as being a pointer to intense construction projects happening in the country. We also came across several convoys of extra-long trucks carrying wind generator towers and rotor blades (for probably Turkana Wind Farm). The sheer size of this equipment is mind boggling and a sight to behold with each blade being all of 50-70 feet or more in length. You can imagine the length of the truck transporting such equipment. Somewhere along the way, a convoy of trucks carrying boilers (or silos) slowed us down to a veritable crawl no doubt destined for one of the factories in the region
No doubt all this activity shall translate into business opportunities for a large number of people either directly involved in the actual projects as skilled laborers and suppliers or indirectly as beneficiaries of economic activity associated with large scale projects from accommodation facilities, hotels and restaurants, retail shops, mobile money, phone repairs, watch repairs etc along the planned routes. These kinds of projects have the potential to turn around whole communities that are located in the immediate neighborhood of the ongoing projects and any right thinking citizen should be as anxious to see that these projects are a success simply because of the physical changes that follow in their wake. India as an example, with its 60,000 kilometers of rail tracks has probably grown into an economic giant partly because of the ease of transporting, goods, services and people cheaply and over long distances thanks to the Indian Railways the largest public sector employer in that country.
Ironically, this project to some extent also spells doom to the main purveyors of the tonnes of equipment, supplies and materials required by the standard gauge project, the thousands of long haul trucks that have been the main transporter of goods and commodities from Mombasa to hundreds of industrial, commercial and institutional companies across East Africa once the cheaper and faster option of rail transport becomes a reality. But for now, the truck rules supreme as it cargoes its precious commodities and machinery to drive the economies of the East African Community member countries.
I am glad I drove down to the Coast and back notwithstanding the slow 7 hours journey thanks to the hundreds of trucks on the road because it gave me an opportunity to see the progress made in this mega project costing billions of shillings, probably the largest one in Kenya since independence as well as observe first-hand the movement of vast quantities of machinery, industrial goods and other commodities. Brace yourselves for emerging business opportunities when the Nairobi to Mombasa phase of the standard gauge rail project is completed because with journey times estimated at 4 hours one way to Mombasa, it shall be possible to live in Nairobi and run a comfortable and profitable business venture somewhere in Mtito Andei and yet commute daily back to Nairobi.
14/10/14
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