Tanzania is eating Kenya’s regional cake

Kenya is the unofficial regional custodian of a space you rarely hear mentioned in the heated political and economic conversation in Nairobi.

It is called the Northern Corridor – a transit and economic artery that, as someone put it, “connects Kenya and five other landlocked countries to the sea and with the world economy”. The corridor comprises the international road networks, rail networks, waterways and pipeline transport that serve Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, northern Tanzania and parts of Ethiopia.

A huge chunk of Kenyan wealth has been and is created along this corridor, where most of its industries, rich agricultural fields, and also where now a large chunk of its population lives. Kenya has also derived a lot of its regional geopolitical clout from being the anchor national for the Northern Corridor.

However, at the apex of its politics and bureaucracy, Kenya today has very few, if any, classic national security fundamentalists, who would obsess about leveraging the Northern Corridor as an existential issue for the country. These days many people talk about “soft power”, and despise shields and spears.

It is time for a rethink. A few days ago, the African Development Bank (AfDB) approved $696.41 million for Burundi and Tanzania to start Phase II of the Joint Tanzania-Burundi-DR Congo Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Project.

AfDB said the financing is intended to construct 651 kilometres of the Tanzania-Burundi railway line. The electric standard gauge railway project will be connected to the existing railway network providing access to the port of Dar es Salaam. A total of 400 kilometres of rail infrastructure has already been built in Tanzania from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma since the start of the first phase of the project. The rest of the section from Dodoma to Tabora is under construction.

“Access to an efficient cost-effective long-haul bulk transport service through the SGR will incentivize large-scale mining and commercial agriculture. It will transform the Central Transport Corridor to an economic corridor by enhancing trade and manufacturing opportunities along the corridor influence zone…”

“The construction of this railway will allow Burundi to intensify the exploitation of nickel, of which the country has the 10th largest deposit in the world in the Musongati mining fields. The country also has resources such as lithium and cobalt, which are expected to generate significant revenue for the country through the rail link with the port of Dar es Salaam which currently accounts for 80 per cent of the country’s import and export trade,” it said.

Separately, a branch of the railway, the Isaka–Kigali Standard Gauge Railway is a planned railway line linking the town of Isaka in Tanzania to Rwanda’s Kigali.

Like the Northern Corridor is anchored at Mombasa Port, the Central Corridor is anchored at Dar es Salaam Port, heads inland through the Tanzanian interior including its capital Dodoma, the city of Mwanza, southwestern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the eastern regions of the DRC.

The Northern Corridor was supposed to get a steroid shot from the Standard Gauge Railway starting in Kenya, into Uganda, branching off to South Sudan, and heading further west into Rwanda. When the SGR ran into stormy weather, the gas was knocked out. Additionally, Uganda chose to route its oil pipeline from the Albertine fields 1,443 kilometres away through Tanzania to the port of Tanga. It was a major boost for the Central Corridor.

Though we remain in this together, the Central Corridor is slowly sucking life away from the Northern Corridor. On the Ugandan side, a new expressway from the capital Kampala eastward the old industrial city of Jinja, is caught up in the bureaucratic tree branches. It would be a major boost for the corridor. Uganda has also built new highways to the Kenyan border towns of Lwakhakha and Suam,  opening a new carriage to South Sudan, and northwest DRC. A massive new electricity line is about to be completed from soon-to-be-finished Karuma to South Sudan and DRC.

But these won’t be enough to tip the balance away from the Central Corridor, and stop the players along, especially Tanzania, to eat Kenya’s regional cake.

One of the reasons is that alongside the Central Corridor, a lot of money is going into upper Southern Africa and Central Africa. The US and the European Union have committed nearly $2 billion already, the jewel of the crown being the mouth-watering upgrade of the 1,300-kilometre Lobito rail corridor that links the copper and cobalt belts in Zambia and the DRC with the port of Lobito in Angola.

People like to go the parties where the cool girls and boys are. In a previous winter in Rome, our hosts drove around looking for a restaurant where we should eat. They stopped at the one where there was the longest queue of fellows freezing in line to get in. Kenya needs to ensure that the queues outside the Northern Corridor are long and that the hot crowd are at its party. It could become very lonely if it doesn’t.