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Roundup: Uganda strives to revamp railway system to fast track dev't

Xinhua, October 9, 2016 Adjust font size:

As dawn breaks, Sarah Nanfuka, a vegetable vendor readies herself not to miss the train. Every morning at six, she is among the dozens that queue at the nearby train stage to board to the capital Kampala where she sells her vegetables before boarding back home, about 15km east of the capital.

This train transport, according Nanfuka, who is also a single mother of two children, has drastically cut down her transport cost which was taking a big share of her earnings.

Previously she depended on road transport which she said was expensive for her.

Passenger train transport in Uganda is no ordinary story. Over two decades ago the train system went into limbo, after being run down by poor management and the political upheavals the country had been going through.

There were fond memories of the country's passenger and cargo train transport. The country was easily linked to her eastern neighbor Kenya, from where its goods reached the rest of the world through the sea port of Mombasa.

Internally, there was a railway network which facilitated the movement of people and goods from place to another at a lesser cost than road transport.

Years on, the government is striving to revamp the railway system. Apart from the cargo train which crosses the border to Kenya, internally, the government has revamped the train system in the capital. Although it is not yet fully functional, people like Nanfuka are already benefiting.

According to Kampala city authorities, there is a plan to have the Greater Kampala Light Rail Mass Transit system. The system is intended to provide cheap, reliable, convenient, comfortable and safe public mass transport.

Kampala is the major business and industrial hub of Uganda, contributing over 70 percent of the country's industrial production and over 60 percent of the country's GDP.

At the national level, the government is negotiating with China to help fund the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). The SGR is looked at as a regional project in East Africa, although each country negotiates separately for funding.

Upon completion, the SGR will be linking the Kenyan seaport of Mombasa to Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. In Kenya, construction started while in Uganda feasibility studies and funding negotiations are still on going.

Economists argue that if the railway project is completed, it will be a major milestone in promoting regional trade.

"Studies carried out by experts at Makerere University (Uganda's top university) have found that by far Uganda faces very expensive transport costs. This means our imports become expensive and also our exports become less attractive because they are expensive to take to the international markets. So the railway is very important, it is a cheap means of transport if we are going to increase our exports," Elly Twineyo Kamugisha, an Economist and author of a book 'Why Africa Fails', told Xinhua in an interview.

Kasingye Kyamugambi, Project Coordinator SGR told Xinhua in an interview that the SGR project is a huge transformational project for Uganda and the east African region.

"We will have a fully functional railway system. We will have trains moving from Mombasa to Kampala in 23 hours as opposed to currently 7-14 days," he said.

Each freight train will have the capacity to carry 216 (20ft) containers moving at a speed of 100kph. The railway capacity will be more than 10 trains simultaneously and 40 trains per day.

For the passenger trains, they will have the capacity of 960 passengers moving at a speed of 120kph.

"This railway system is going to speed up the turnaround time of moving business that essentially improves our business competitiveness as a country and region," Kyamugambi said.

Government figures show that the country loses two billion U.S. dollars annually using road transport. The construction of the SGR is expected to cut down on this cost.

The SGR, according to the government, will accelerate industrialization through easier and cheaper transport to world markets. Endit