President William Ruto has confirmed that construction of the Kenya-Uganda Standard Gauge Railway link will be officially launched on March 20 in Kisumu, a project the two governments say will slash the Nairobi-Kampala journey from 14 hours to 4 hours and deliver a step-change in East African trade connectivity. Ruto made the announcement at the Extraordinary Summit of the East African Community in Arusha on March 7, with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni confirmed as a co-host for the groundbreaking. The two governments committed to completing the full link by 2028 under an agreement signed in March 2025.
- The Kenyan section, designated Phase 2B, covers approximately 264 kilometres from Naivasha through Kisumu to Malaba at the Uganda border. This is the critical missing link that has held up the broader East African SGR network for years.
- Uganda’s side of the border crossing, the 273km Malaba to Kampala Eastern Line, is already under contract with Turkish firm Yapı Merkezi at a value of $2.9 billion. Financing comes from a syndicate of European and US lenders led by Citibank and backed by UK Export Finance. Uganda received a Limited Notice to Proceed and an initial tranche of $83 million to begin preliminary works; President Museveni officially launched the Ugandan section in Tororo in November 2024.
- The combined network, once complete, will connect Mombasa to Kampala entirely by standard gauge rail, with onward extensions planned to Rwanda and the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The project will run at a design speed of 120km/h, electrified to European and American standards. Uganda’s section includes two major stations, four medium stations, one marshalling yard and three freight terminals, plus rolling stock.
The announcement at Arusha carries more weight than previous SGR commitments because construction has actually started on the Ugandan side, and a specific date with a head-of-state groundbreaking has been set for Kenya’s section. The two-decade history of the East African SGR is littered with missed deadlines: Uganda terminated its original Chinese contractor after eight years of non-performance in 2023 before switching to Yapı Merkezi, and Kenya’s Phase 2B has faced repeated financing delays since the Naivasha terminus opened in 2019. The March 2025 bilateral agreement to jointly pursue European and Middle Eastern financing for the Kenyan section was the turning point. For cargo shippers, the stakes are enormous: road freight from Mombasa to Kampala currently takes multiple days and passes through multiple border crossings, and the SGR promises to cut logistics costs roughly in half according to Ugandan government estimates. The broader network, connecting East Africa’s Indian Ocean ports to landlocked hinterlands in Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan and the DRC, is the backbone of the EAC’s integration agenda.
The Bigger Picture: The March 20 groundbreaking, if it holds, would mark the first tangible construction activity on Kenya’s Phase 2B after years of financing uncertainty. For investors in East African logistics, manufacturing and real estate along the corridor, Kisumu now becomes the pivot point. The port city on Lake Victoria is positioned to become a major inland freight hub once rail replaces road as the primary freight artery. Freight costs between Mombasa and Kampala are expected to halve, compressing supply chains for manufacturers across Uganda, Rwanda and eastern DRC. The 2028 completion target is ambitious given the financing complexity, but with Uganda’s section already mobilised and a bilateral agreement in place, the project is closer to reality than it has ever been.
Source: The Star
