Region’s mega projects already showing their impact

Governments across the Global South often identify uneven and insufficient connectivity as one of the primary impediments to economic development, including a fairer distribution of opportunity and welfare. No wonder then that megaprojects are commonly branded as key vehicles for change; for megaprojects signal prowess, opportunity and transformation.

The Central Corridor connecting Tanzania to Uganda and the Great Lakes region, the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor in Tanzania, the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia and the Standard Gauge Railway project in Kenya, and LAPSSET are on the list of ongoing megaprojects in East Africa.

While the idea of a second Kenyan deep-water port is some 50 years old, it did not gain traction until 2005, when the post-war southern Sudan was looking for a new outlet for its projected oil exports.

Simultaneously, the Ethiopian government showed an interest in an alternative transport corridor to the Indian Ocean. However, soon after the ostentatious launch of the project in Lamu in 2012 by President Mwai Kibaki, South Sudan reached an agreement with Sudan on oil exportation before the former slid into civil war in 2013.

However, the conveyance of crude remained pivotal for the political economy of LAPSSET, thanks to the discovery of oil in Turkana in northwestern Kenya. The Kenyan government frames the corridor primarily as a regional transportation and trade link, instrumental to the country’s industrialisation policy.

In 2012, in line with Vision 2030, the government produced Sessional Paper No. 8 of 2012 (National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands), which deliberately focused on reversing the previous policy of concentrating development efforts in high-potential areas.

There is a need to close the gap between these areas and the rest of the country, while at the same time protecting and promoting the mobility and institutional arrangements that are essential to productive pastoralism amid the threat of climate change and the need for food security.

The LAPSSET corridor is aimed at connecting the land-locked countries of South Sudan and Ethiopia to the Indian Ocean, as well as integrating the vast and historically marginalised northern parts of Kenya into the fold of the Kenyan state. It includes a new 23 berth port in Lamu, about 2,000km of highways and roads, and crude and product oil pipelines.

Furthermore, an economic area for industrial investments is envisioned to extend up to 50km on each side of the 500-metre wide infrastructural corridor. Moreover, the Isiolo airport is equipped to handle commercial or cargo for the transportation of miraa (khat) to Somalia.

The government has covered the lion’s share of the investment costs of the multibillion-dollar project for the completion of the first three phases of the project and several roads and an airport as the rest of the project is at various stages of progression.

The fruits of the LAPSSET project have been felt by citizens in the areas it touches in Lamu, Garissa, Turkana, Samburu, Marsabit, Meru, and Isiolo counties, as well as near the Moyale one-stop border point.

LAPSSET aligns with policies and projects meant to promote the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda on agriculture, entrepreneurship, housing and settlement, the digital superhighway and creative economy and improved healthcare for Kenyans.

The socio-economic impacts of the development project strategy are mainly observable in the service sector. All of this would significantly increase the country’s GDP and have a multiplier effect on taxation besides making room for increased expenditure on social sectors such as education, health and basic amenities.

In this context, the development corridors could even contribute to improving security in Kenya and the East and Central African region, indirectly through incentives for regional stability and better relations with Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, DRC, and directly through development opportunities.

— The writer is a social scientist