Friends are leaving and Kenya Should be Worried

They always say that when everyone is running away from you, the first thing you have to do is to look around you. Maybe you have defecated and you are not aware.

Kenya has been the economic powerhouse of the East African region for decades. There was no way one could reach the epitome of the East African economy without passing through Kenya. The country was the indisputable queen of East Africa and a bright future for Africa too.

The glorious days of Kenya as the maiden of East Africa are deeming as closer economic partners take off from her. Tanzania is slowly but steady coming up and economists have placed Tanzania as the leading economy in East Africa beating Kenya for the first time.

The first suitor to take off was Uganda. Kenya was courting Uganda so that they could an oil pipeline through Kenya. Uganda appeared to have agreed but shocked Kenya rudely when she chose Tanzania. The pipeline will now be built through Tanzania and Kenya has no stake.

Read: Impact of the Standard Gauge Railway on the Economy

The recent and most devastating is the leaving of Rwanda from taking part in the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway, the multibillion project that had already kicked off. Rwanda has now announced that there are plans to develop rail links to Indian Ocean through Tanzania the reason being that they were cheaper and shorter than route transiting Kenya. Kenya is slowly being left in the cold. When some politicians raised concerns that the building of the railway was more expensive than in other countries, they were branded traitors and corrupt but the truth is slowly coming to light.

Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda agreed in the year 2013 to link up to the Kenyan port of Mombasa along a Standard Gauge Railway at a cost of 13 billion US Dollars. According to studies done by Rwanda, building the link through Kenya would cost the country one billion US Dollars while building the same through Tanzania would cost between 800 to 900 million US Dollars.

Article by Juma Fred.