Uganda invests $3 billion in new railway system for efficient transport

Transport is essential in global contexts, yet it often comes with high costs in many regions of Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, depends heavily on road transport.

As populations grow, many people cannot afford their own vehicles.

In countries such as Uganda, the private sector largely dominates transportation, resulting in high expenses for the public.

Uganda's transportation network faces difficulties due to congestion in Kampala and nearby regions, with many roads either unpaved or filled with potholes.

Each week, Humphrey Mwijukye of UniFreight Group Logistician strives to adhere to delivery schedules at an international shipping firm.

He keeps a close eye on the company’s trucks that travel between Kampala and the coastal port of Mombasa in Kenya.

This is the company’s most active route, fraught with various challenges.

“We are faced with issues of traffic, the congestion of all the trucks on the road, coming through one border post at Malaba. So that has created a situation where we are not able to meet our delivery timelines. Our clients are also held back with the delays that happen out of anyone’s control in the supply chain which causes us to have more costs,”

The Ugandan government is creating flexibility after it signed an agreement with a Turkish construction firm to build a 272-kilometre section of the Uganda Standard Gauge Railway.

The nation is looking for some relief following the signing of an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) agreement between Uganda's government and the Turkish company Yapı Merkezi.

This deal, valued at €2.7 billion, is aimed at constructing the Malaba-Kampala segment of the Uganda Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) over the next four years.

Gen. Katumba Wamala, the Minister of Works and Transport, stated that “The Standard Gauge Railway will become the backbone of our surface transport system and will provide with the much needed transport capacity in the country and region as cargo and passenger transport demand has been increasing rapidly over the last few years.”

Uganda, as a landlocked nation with the closest coastal port in Mombasa, Kenya, situated 1500 km away, is anticipated to increasingly shift towards an export-driven economy.

The Uganda Standard Gauge Railway will connect Uganda’s capital Kampala to Kenya’s coastal port city of Mombasa.

This project is a part of a 1,724-kilometer Standard Gauge Railway designed to connect Uganda with four of its neighboring nations.

While improving the train systems could significantly enhance the country's economic growth, Uganda is struggling to finance the almost $3 billion needed for construction over the next four years due to increasing public debt.