After recently moving to CNN, Victoria Rubadiri will make her debut this weekend on Connecting Africa. In the show, Rubadiri will highlight Kenya’s SGR’s recent move to add refrigerated containers to the cargo locomotive.
For the first time, wagons that are capable of carrying refrigerated containers are also being added to the Kenya SGR Cargo network.
Leonard Githinji, Head of Business Development at Syokimau ICD Ltd. talks about the benefits this will bring, “With the introduction of the refrigerated wagon by Kenya Railways, what will happen is the cost of doing business will go down, it’ll lower the cost of insurance premium. The containers’ premium is quite high because you never know what will happen on the road. On the rail, you have got, I would say, 99% sure bet that you’re going to get to the port with no problem at all.”
The SGR is one of the largest infrastructure projects being undertaken in East Africa. The current line runs from Mombasa Port to Nairobi and onto Naivasha Inland Container Port. There are plans to extend the line into Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, and beyond. Philip Mainga, Managing Director of the Kenya Railways Corporation, says that rail is an increasingly effective way to carry large volumes of heavy goods over long distances, “We used to take over 12 to 24 hours to be in Nairobi. Now we are taking eight hours.” He continues, “The most important thing is the weight that these wagons can carry. This saves the Kenyan roads.”
In operation since 2017, Kenya’s standard gauge railway system (SGR) is transforming the way goods are being moved throughout the country and region. Thomas Ojijo, Head of Operations at the Inland Container Depot says, “Conventional cargo will include steel. We are doing a lot on fertilizer, which is being distributed to various parts of the country. Currently, we have about 30,000 tons that we’re moving.”