Kenya-US sign pact to construct State-Of-The-Art Nairobi-Mombasa Superhighway.

The high-speed expressway, the first of its kind in Kenya, will allow uninterrupted speeds of 120 km/h, cutting travel time from the current 10 hours to just four hours.

Kenya and the United States have signed a pact to build a state-of-the-art superhighway connecting Nairobi and Mombasa.

The project, known as the Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway project, is due to be built by US construction firm Bechtel Corporation.

President Donald Trump and his counterpart President Uhuru Kenyatta also announced that their governments had established direct flights between Nairobi and New York.

The high-speed expressway, the first of its kind in Kenya, will allow uninterrupted speeds of 120 km/h, cutting travel time from the current 10 hours to just four hours. 

It will initially have four lanes, expandable to six, and have a closed toll system with 19 interchanges, another hallmark of the impressive mega projects done during the Jubilee administration.

The planned superhighway is divided into three main sections with the first section (174km) starting at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi and ending at Kibwezi town in Makueni County.

The second section (132km) will be built between Kibwezi and Voi, while the third section (160km) will be constructed between Voi and Mombasa.

The expressway will be built by US engineering and construction firm Bechtel Corporation at a cost of Ksh300 billion ($3 billion). 

The company, which boasts of having completed completed more than 25,000 extraordinary projects across 160 countries on all seven continents, opened a regional Africa office in Nairobi in 2017. 

It estimates that the road project will generate nearly twice the money spent on the project over a period of 25 years. 

The highway expansion project, which forms part of Kenya’s Vision 2030 development programme, is expected to be complete in 2023.

On top of reducing logistics costs and addressing road safety between the two cities, the expressway, alongside the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) are expected to promote development in East African countries such as Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.

(Source: Tuko)