Uganda announced on Tuesday that it had reached a $3 billion agreement with a Turkish business to construct an electric railway line that would connect the landlocked nation to Kenya, its neighbour.
According to Transport Minister, Katumba Wamala, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) track will connect Malaba on the Kenyan border with Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
“We signed a contract with Yapi Merkezi from Turkey for construction of a 272-kilometre (170-mile) line at euros 2.7 billion,” or $3 billion, Wamala told AFP.
He claimed that work on the line, which is a 1,700-kilometer regional rail project, is scheduled to start in November and that Yapi Merkezi had stated that the project would be finished in four years.
“With the railway network in place, Uganda hopes to overcome the long delays of transporting goods from Mombasa,” Wamala said, referring to Kenya’s Indian Ocean port city which is a major gateway for Ugandan trade.
According to Yapi Merkezi, the agreement includes both the delivery of train cars and the building of the railway. The trains can travel at speeds of up to 120 km/h and can carry 25 million tonnes of cargo annually.
“This should enable us to cut cargo transport costs by half,” Ramathan Ggoobi, permanent secretary at the Ugandan finance ministry, said in a government video shared online.
“I am telling you we are the second most expensive route in the world… now we should be amongst the most competitive.”
The Turkish company and Tanzania reached a separate agreement to build an electric railway connecting the nation’s major hubs, which was followed by the Ugandan accord.
In July of this year, services on the SGR line that links the capital Dodoma with Tanzania’s biggest metropolis Dar es Salaam commenced.
In 2022, Tanzania also came to an agreement worth $2.2 billion with a Chinese company to construct the last segment of the SGR line, which will connect Tanzania’s main port to its neighbours.