The 471-kilometer-long Mombasa-Nairobi stretch is the first section of a planned East Africa railway network. Passenger trains travel at 120 kilometers per hour, while freight trains run at 80 kilometers per hour and are able to carry 25 million tons per year. Connecting Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, with Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, this is the first rail line with Chinese standards ever built outside of China. It is also the first new rail line in Kenya in a century.
The project started in October 2014, and the railway opened to traffic on June 1, 2017. It cuts the travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi from over ten hours to a little more than four hours. By November 2018, 1,762 trains had safely run 846,000 kilometers and transported 2 million passengers, meeting the target passenger number 10 months ahead of time. On average, four sevenths of Nairobi's 3.5 million residents have travelled by this line.
Construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi section has created nearly 30,000 jobs in Kenya and boosted annual GDP growth by 1.5-2 percent. The cost of movement of goods has been reduced by 40 percent since the completion of this initial project. More importantly, a whole industry chain including ports has taken shape with the construction of the railway.
A long-term masterplan envisions a rail system serving six East African countries, namely – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. This modern network will help promote economic development in East Africa and beyond.
