Workers lay tracks for the standard gauge railway Phase 2A at Suswa, Kenya on August 1, 2018. Uganda has signed a new contract for the construction of the Malaba-Kampala phase.
The inference from the Latin idiom potiusque sero quam nunquam “better late than never,” is that it is better to do something late than not at all. This might be the appropriate reaction by Ugandans and the wider East African Community to the news that Kampala has made its most definitive commitment yet to get its standard gauge railway (SGR) project off the ground.
Sixteen years since it committed to the joint development of an SGR line running from Mombasa to Kigali with its Northern Corridor partners Kenya and Rwanda, Kampala had long become the man out of step in the region.
It had also become a source of frustration in some quarters, since the project couldn’t take off farther west, unless Uganda built its part.
Back home, the leadership had come under pressure after latecomer Tanzania kept posting enviable milestones of its own electric line development.
All that seemed changed on October 14, when officials signed a €2.7 billion ($2.93 billion) contract with Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi to build a 272km electric powered line between Kampala and Malaba.
The development is cause for both hope and caution. Optimism because the contract signature reflects a sense of purpose and caution, because Uganda is not exactly famous for smooth execution of public infrastructure project. The catalogue of failed, drawn-out and half-executed projects over the past three decades is long.
Equally, there are still many potential pitfalls, not least cost-escalation with associated breaches of the debt ceiling. On-and-off work is another.
Even when Yapi delivers the project within the €2.7 billion raw funding envelope, the eventual cost could be significantly higher, when the cost of funding, the larger part of it private, is factored in.
Further afield, Kenya will need to extend its SGR to Malaba in tandem with Kampala, if the Uganda line is to make economic sense.
There is also the small matter that, with Kenya operating a non-energised line, there will be no interoperability between the two networks at the level of traction.
That means unnecessary loss of time and additional cost as train heads get swapped to haul the trains to their final destinations.
Amid all these questions, the mitigating factor will be that the railway line becomes a reality and that there’s transparency around emerging issues and compensation for project-affected persons.
A lot is also going to depend on factors beyond our borders, but there’s no turning back now -- the only way open is forward.
At this point, the Uganda government should be praised for moving the project beyond a concept on paper to execution stage.
Efficient execution and further development are, however, important because scale is not exactly to Uganda’s advantage.
Rail economics depend a lot on track length – the longer, the more viable. In this case, Uganda will initially be depending on revenue from 272km to recoup the cost of construction.
That requires each kilometre to have generated slightly over €9.9 million ($10.75 million) to pay the loan during its economic lifetime. Implementing the network to the envisaged 1,700km is therefore an absolute necessity.
The traditional answer to better late than never is, “It is never too late.” What matters, for now, is that the journey has started and so we say, let the works begin.
