PRESIDENTS LAUNCH MISSING ROAD LINK CONSTRUCTION
(Posted 15th October 2015)
The farewell visit of Tanzania’s outgoing President Jakaya Kikwete to Kenya, apart from much rhetoric, also yielded a concrete result as, together with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta he launched a major road construction project.
The road from Voi to the Tanzanian border at Holili / Taveta has been one of the most notoriously bad road stretches connecting two key areas of the neighbouring countries and been a huge obstacle in improving trade and tourism flows between the two EAC member states.
While the stretch to Mwatate on the Kenyan side has been tarmacked for some time already is the crucial link from the Sarova Taita Hills Lodge to the border still in a horrific shape, often leading to safari operators shunning visits to Lake Jipe, Lake Chala or the Grogan’s Castle, all landmarks in their own right and worth seeing.
The road is financed by several sources including the African Development Bank and will open up parts of Tsavo East to tourist visitors previously often inaccessible when heavy rains turned the road into a quagmire of mud.
Kenyan tourism sources have confided that they harbour much hope that the next president elected by Tanzanians will resume friendly relations with Kenya similar to the 10 years of the Mkapa presidency when a record inflow of investments from Kenya to Tanzania took place, including the building and opening of the first four Serena properties.
The Kikwete presidency is now largely perceived as having harboured and even fueled anti Kenyan sentiments, largely to the detriment of improved trade relations and the full implementation of several East African Community protocols. As a result did the three EAC countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya form the Northern Corridor Integration Projects partnership, aka Coalition of the Willing, under which major infrastructure projects were agreed and notably a common tourist Visa launched. The integration of the airspaces too has been long in coming and is only one element in a long list of accomplishments, which includes the alignment of phone tariffs and passport free travel among the three by citizens.
The remaining road section from the Taita Hills to the border is estimated to take about a year and a half to be completed and will then no doubt become one of the most travelled new highways between the two countries.
