Why the State shelved the Sh180 billion Mau Summit highway plan

The Mau Summit highway project was delayed by the Kenya Kwanza administration because it was too expensive, and the State is now pushing for a review of the Sh179.9 billion ($1.3 billion) project.

According to the new administration, the overall cost was too high given Kenya’s constrained fiscal situation at the time.

The government is currently in negotiations with the project’s contractors and financiers, which will delay the project’s implementation and turn away financiers like the World Bank and the African Development Fund.

“We are still in negotiation. It became a bit hard for us to afford going by the current dynamics, so we requested them to review their presentation to be able to see whether we can make them affordable,” said the Roads Transport Principal Secretary Joseph Mbugua.

Mr. Mbugua did not provide a number when asked by what percentage the government wanted the cost to be reduced.

“You see, affordability… If you are told to afford something it is about the total cost of the product vis-à-vis what we can support financially,” he explained.

However, Mr. Mbugua was confident that the negotiations would be successful because the government had already made its proposal to the project’s financiers and contractors.

“And we are also working with them. So, we will come to a consensus,” he said on the side-lines of the fourth Engineers Partnerships Convention (EPC) in Nairobi.

Although construction on the 233-kilometer road has not yet begun, the government has set aside Sh816 million over four fiscal years, from 2025 to 2026, for the purchase of land along the proposed route.

The contractor will use existing KeNHA way leaves, meaning no new land acquisitions, a source at the procuring agency, the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), previously said.

According to reports, the Kenya Kwanza administration halted the highway’s construction, sending contractors and investors of Kenya’s most expensive road project into a tailspin.

The building of the Nairobi-Nakuru-Mau Summit toll road, which was proposed by former president Uhuru Kenyatta and was initially scheduled to begin in September 2021, has been pending President William Ruto’s approval.

Three French companies announced they were prepared to start construction after receiving funding from the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Sources close to the project, however, claim that the new administration has been coy about the road’s tolling, which they worry will upset President Ruto’s Rift Valley neighbourhood’s economy.

Construction shouldn’t begin until President Ruto gives the go-ahead, according to both contractors and financiers.

Since then, during a trip to France in January, President Ruto has had bilateral talks with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in which it is understood that the upcoming road construction was discussed.

France has stepped up its efforts outside of the nations that speak the French language and has Kenya in mind as a point of entry into the East African region.

This is the biggest French-related project in the nation at a time when the European economy is vying for a share of Kenya’s infrastructure spending billions, which have primarily gone to Chinese companies.

The French consortium, which consisted of Vinci Highways SAS, Meridian Infrastructure Africa Fund, and Vinci Concessions SAS, anticipated that by enforcing tolls on the road, it would recover its investments in 30 years.

Mau Summit Road, the main route from Nairobi to western Kenya and the neighboring nations of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, would have been widened into a four-lane dual carriageway through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.

Lack of an alternate route for drivers unwilling to pay toll fees, as is the case with the Nairobi Expressway, has been one of the main problematic issues.