The East African Community (EAC) has received Sh175.4 million ($1.4 million) for a feasibility study on building a four-lane expressway for Kisumu to Uganda through Busia in an upgrade targeted to boost regional integration, trade and economic development.
The funds from the African Development Bank (AfDB) will be used to assess the viability of the 256km road that will terminate in Kakira—a town in Uganda’s border district of Jinja.
The road is part of improvements on the Northern Corridor, a key trader route in East Africa providing landlocked countries like Uganda with faster access to the port of Mombasa.
“The funding from the African Development Bank would be used to conduct feasibility studies on the 256km multinational Kisumu-Kisian-Busia/Kakira-Malaba-Busitema-Busia expressway project,” said EAC Deputy Secretary General for Planning and Infrastructure Steven Mlote in a statement.
“The proposed intervention in this segment consists of the rehabilitation of the existing road two-lane single carriageway to bitumen standard while upgrading it to a two-lane double carriageway along 104 km.”
The 104km four-lane stretch will run from Kisian in Kisumu to Busia border town. The project will see the construction of an 11km link road between Kisian and Kisumu bypass.
Another 127 km will be built between Jinja and Malaba, which will be connected to a 20km stretch that will run along the border to Busia.
The high-speed highway will be the continuation of the $1.48 billion Kampala-Jinja expressway, which is expected to be completed by 2025.
A private concessionaire will be procured for a period of 30 years including an eight-year construction period on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis under a PPP model, where motorists will be expected to pay a toll to access the Kampala expressway.
It is not clear whether the four-lane expressway from Kisumu to Uganda will be a toll road. – Business Daily
