The launch of the standard gauge railway 18 months ahead of schedule was due largely to the personal zeal and commitment of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Despite criticism from the Opposition, he said, the launch of Madaraka Express would "reshape the story of Kenya for the next 100 years". It marks the second and a historic phase.
The plan to construct the Kenya-Uganda railway in July 1895 had also attracted criticism. It had cost the British exchequer £5.5 million. The Liberals, Radicals and Irish nationalists described it as "gigantic folly", and Elspeth Huxley wrote, "Never before or since, has such an impracticable, extravagant and uneconomical railway been planned". However, the British under Secretary of State and Foreign Affairs explained the profitability and benefits of constructing the railway. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury went further and assured Parliament that the railway would deliver a fatal blow to the slave trade that Britain was committed to end, dry up supplies to caravans and the trade that supported them and thereby boost British trade.
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