This week, the tender documents went out for Kenya’s new railway – a second standard gauge railway line between Mombasa and Nairobi. There will also be a link from the city centre to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi and future plans to extend the line to Kisumu and on to Uganda. Journey times to the coast will drop from a rickety 14 hours (if you are lucky) to around three hours.
They aren’t hanging around with the building either. The aim is to get the whole thing up and running within three years. The budget is around 340 billion Kenya shillings (about £2.5 billion/$4 billion). It’s being financed by a loan from the African Development Bank and a 1.5% tax on all imported goods. Needless to say, the Chinese are in control of development.
The grand plan
Look a bit further afield and this is just one cog in a far grander plan for the railways in East Africa. The vast new and improved web of lines being planned calls for development on a scale that has not been seen since the empire-builders first swept into town in the 1890s. Existing lines will be upgraded. New lines will fill in obvious gaps, such as a connection between Kenya and Tanzania. However the bigger projects will take new lines north to South Sudan and Ethiopia, inland to Rwanda and Burundi, with a projected new high speed line connecting Lamu’s new deep-water port with central Africa. There is even a mooted plan to cross Africa with a high-speed link and two deep-water ports, thereby cutting out the long Cape sea route.
A lot of buts…
It’s all incredibly exciting to watch and could transform the continent. But – and there are a lot of buts – at the moment, Africa’s rickety railways are slow and stop a lot. They are also incredibly cheap. Where passenger trains run, which sadly isn’t everywhere, they are crucial arteries for local communities and traders. High-speed lines are being built for freight. If passengers are considered at all, tickets will be expensive and stops will be infrequent. These new lines are railways for developed nations. The poorest people still need those lifelines. And while the trains themselves will undoubtedly be safer, they may not be safer for the wildlife and people who live along the tracks. Hitting an elephant at 180 kph is no laughing matter. There are serious ecological implications to a route that runs right through the Tsavo National Park.
The Lunatic Line
Personally, my biggest query hanging over Kenya’s new railway is – will it have a soul? Clanky it may be, but I’ve never forgotten my journeys on the Jambo Express Deluxe, carefully timing the soup between jolts so as not to pour it down my front, sitting on the steps of the open door taking photos and chatting to local women in the stations as we passed. This line, from Mombasa to Nairobi, down the sheer wall of the Rift Valley and on to Lake Victoria, is one of the great historical railways of the world. It was christened ‘the Lunatic Line’ in a satirical poem of 1896 when it set off across virgin bush towards the source of the Nile, absentmindedly founding Kenya along the way. Thousands died in its construction, including 142 Indian railway workers eaten by the notorious maneating lions of Tsavo. One is now on display, stuffed in Chicago’s Field Museum (lion, that is, not railway worker)! There’s a fabulous little Railway Museum next to Nairobi station filled with stories, photos and memorabilia.
Will they write poems?
So, Rift Valley Railways, when building your new and undoubtedly necessary fast track , please don’t forget the people, the animals and the history. I’m not for one moment suggesting you allow any of your workers to get eaten for the story. That wouldn’t be nice. But alongside the high speed services, please run stopping services for the villagers and on the front, use the old Uganda railway cars and let nostalgic tourists continue to wave to children, take pictures of zebras and spill Brown Windsor soup off crested spoons. Above all, make sure that Kenya’s new railway, like the old one, has a soul about which people wish to sing. In your planning, pause for a moment and ask yourselves – will they write poems?
Looking for lions as the Jambo Express Deluxe crosses Tsavo – on board the Nairobi-Mombasa railway.
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