With citations from X-media, President Ruto expressed his effort to seek help from the United Arab Emirates to make standard gauge railway to the neighboring Uganda and South Sudan.
“We are exploring a partnership agreement with the United Arab Emirates to extend the Standard Gauge Railway,” President William Ruto said on X Tuesday after meeting with the Gulf state’s investment minister Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi. “As part of the plan, we have agreed to conduct a feasibility study over the extension of the SGR due to its capacity to foster regional integration and promote trade.”
We are exploring a partnership agreement with the United Arab Emirates to extend the Standard Gauge Railway to connect Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan.
As part of the plan, we have agreed to conduct a feasibility study over the extension of the SGR due to its capacity to foster, said Ruto.
In October, Uganda signed a deal with Yapi Merkezi Holdings AS to fund its part of the SGR that will connect its capital, Kampala, to the border with neighboring Kenya. Another line that should have linked Uganda to Kenya’s port failed to reach their shared border when China scrapped funding for the rest of the project once it built almost 600 kilometers of the railroad. That left Uganda relying mainly on trucking for access to the port.
The East African nation is also seeking a $1.5 billion loan from Abu Dhabi to help bridge its budget-financing gap.
The cash from the oil-rich emirate would boost Kenya’s foreign-currency reserves and further buttress the shilling, already one the world’s best-performing currencies against the dollar in the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Gulf states including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have spent some of their petrodollars to deepen their influence in Africa while countering dominant powers such as the US, China and Russia.
