Rail finance deal signed with Kenya

If you were to stand on the Kenyan national road connecting the city of Mombasa with Uganda to the west, you would be impressed by the headlights on full blast and the long lines of traffic slowly moving along.

Solomon Mumo, a truck driver who commutes between the two places via that road every week, said he understands perfectly how important it is for an alternate means of transportation to ease the road traffic.

What Solomon referred to is the planned new standard-gauge Mombasa-Nairobi railway line.

On Sunday, Premier Li Keqiang and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta officiated the signing of a co-financing deal on the project.

Kenya was the last stop in Li's four-nation visit to Africa.

Mombasa - the only seaport for Kenya's landlocked neighbors Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi - receives hundreds of metric tons of goods every day. The colonial-era railway line linking Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya's capital, requires more than 12 hours to make a single trip - not an efficient option for a line that carries most of the country's freight.

"The national road is also too narrow for so many vehicles. You won't get through if there's a road accident ahead," Solomon said.

As Kenyatta said after the signing on Sunday, the population in the country has grown so fast, trade has grown so quickly and integration has become so tight, the old railway is not good enough anymore.

The new, 480-km Mombasa-Nairobi railway line, built by China Road and Bridge Corp, will be complete by 2018.

The railway is the first part of an East African railway network, a grand transportation plan stretching 2,700 km to connect the capital cities of most East African countries.

The project will cost up to $3.8 billion and reduce the cost of transportation by 60 percent.

Kenya has great expectations for the railway, hoping it will greatly improve the efficiency of moving goods to its harbor and hasten East African integration.

"The railway will eventually unify all of Africa from the oceans to the mountains in the interior," Kenyatta said on Sunday.

China has been taking a leading part in building a pan-Africa rail network that will link all African capitals, hoping to boost both the Chinese economy by exporting heavy equipment and locomotives as well as promote the integrity of the continent.

With "relatively advanced technologies in railway construction and adequate foreign exchange reserves", Li said that in the African Union, China is in the best position to help African countries realize the dream of railways.

A $13 billion coastal railway project deal was signed during Li's visit to Nigeria last week. The project will connect 10 coastal states of the western African country, according to China Civil Engineering Construction Corp, the contractor.

The project, which will be over 1,300 km long, will have trains expected to run 120 km an hour.

The company said construction of the project will boost the export of Chinese construction equipment, locomotives, steel and electromechanical products totaling $3 billion.

The country is also cooperating with China on a light-rail project.

In Ethiopia, a railway stretching 740 km to link the capital of Addis Ababa with Djibouti's capital is being built to Chinese standards and will be completed by the end of 2015, with a total investment of $4 billion, Xinhua News reported.

Over the past 20 years, Chinese enterprises have built and upgraded 4,500 km of railway in Nigeria, Central China Television reported.

Zhao Jian, a professor of transportation economics at Beijing Jiaotong University, said railway construction in Africa countries is beneficial for both China and the African countries involved.

"A comprehensive railway network could prove especially beneficial for a country like Ethiopia, which has a large land area and produces huge quantities of quality agricultural products," he said.

"Railways are to an economy what blood vessels are to a human body. They are a prerequisite for a country's or region's economic development because a train can carry about 2,000 tons of goods or thousands of passengers in a single trip."

In addition, railways also create jobs for local people and, in turn, stimulate consumption, which is also among the essential concerns of these countries, he said.

Zhao said building railways in Africa will not be without problems. A steady flow of funds could be the biggest one, and China should concentrate on building railways where there is ample need for freight transportation, like concentrated plantations or mining sites, to ensure that they run on profits instead of subsidies.

Contact the writer at zhaoyinan@chinadaily.com.cn.