Recently media reports indicated that the Ugandan SGR project officers who visited their counterparts of Tanzania in April 20023 were stunned with the rapid progress that the Tanzania SGR had achieved. It was reported that 98.8% of the works on the initial phase of the Tanzania SGR project from Dar-er Salaam to Morogoro of 300km had been completed. It was also reported that the works on the second, third and fourth phases of the project were already underway. Last month in May, two contracts worth $2.2bn were awarded to two Chinese companies to do the last and final stretch of the Tanzania SGR project which will see the SGR extended to Burundi, DRC, Rwanda and Ugandan southern border.
This last phase that will see a construction of 2,102km is envisaged to be completed by 2026. This implies that Tanzania will have successfully done its modern electric standard gauge railway stretching a distance of over 4,000km. That for sure won't be a mean milestone for the country and the Great Lakes region.
What is clear from what is happening in Tanzania is that our friends are really making progress. To them, all that was planned is what is actually happening. They are destined to reap big.
What should be interesting to note is that the commissioning of the East African SGR dream as a strategic Northern Infrastructure Corridor was commissioned here in Munyonyo in 2014. The hope and thinking then was that the SGR running from Mombasa through Kampala to south western Uganda, the three land locked countries of Rwanda, Burundi and DRC would be able to transport their cargo to the Mombasa port easily and efficiently. This would also serve to increase and improve on the inter-state trade among these countries. At the commissioning at Munyonyo, there seemed to be enthusiasm and commitment by all the heads of state from Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda. The Ugandans were very upbeat about this envisaged transformational and visionary project.
Our neighbors the Kenyans went back and got to work. By May 2017, exactly two and half years after the Munyonyo commissioning, the first phase of the Kenya SGR of 579km running from Mombasa to Nairobi had been completed and commissioned. In October 2019, the extended line from Nairobi to Suswa - Naivasha a distance of 120km was also commissioned.
Today June 2023, on our part, no single SGR railway slipper has been laid down yet! We are told that probably the construction of the Uganda SGR from Kampala to Malaba may start in September this year.
The last time, we were told of some progress on the SGR front was when we heard that only about 50% of the compensation and land acquisition for the SGR route had been completed.
Now, if this is the rate at which this process is planned to progress and only half of the land acquisition has been so far achieved, and with the seemingly shrinking national resource envelope, it has to be seen when that preliminary process of land acquisition will be completed so as to eventually enable the actual construction works as envisaged by the Turkish contractor to start!
Over time, there has been no shortage of complaints as to why our SGR has over delayed. The usual response has been to urge the wananchi to be patient and remain as hopeful and optimistic as all is being thrashed out to embark on this national critical strategic infrastructure. So, continuing to hope, we shall but, sometimes some of these critical national undertakings need to be taken seriously with focus discipline and within a specified realistic time frame.
If you are using your own generated resources, there might be no need for rushing and you can embark on the undertaking at your own chosen pace and time frame. But when you are borrowing, the money must be used timely in order to be able to get the returns to facilitate the repayment of the borrowed money. What is becoming evident however is that expediency hasn't been a serious ingredient in our planning and in particularly in this SGR aspiration.
Due to our delays in execution coupled with Kenyan continued hesitation to extend their SGR to Ugandan Malaba border, the Tanzanians immediately saw and seized a great opportunity. They saw an opportunity to upstage Kenya in providing an alternative route for the four countries of Rwanda, Burundi, DRC and Uganda. Thus, the Tanzanians quickly and aggressively embarked on constructing a five phased 4,000km electric SGR from Dar to connecting points of the four countries borders.
What we must now come to terms with is the sad reality that once the Tanzanians complete their SGR, our Malaba and Busia transit centers will adversely lose all transit business to Rwanda, Eastern DRC and Burundi.
Therefore, even if we in Uganda eventually manage to do our SGR, which certainly can only happen in not less than six years, none of those countries will see efficiency value in it. First of all, since the TZ SGR will have begun operations much earlier, these countries will have committed themselves to the TZ route and the traders will have already experienced its benefits. It is very doubtful that the Uganda SGR will be of much economic value to them. The net effect of this is that we might be committing our energies and very valuable scarce resources on an undertaking that might end being a liability or a white elephant!
Matters get even more worrying due to the fact that we are currently pursuing a dual parallel approach of revamping the old metered gauge line while also trying to do the SGR. We are doing both using borrowed money. For any of the two lines to make sense, they must be economically viable in enabling the country to repay back the loans.
With the envisaged developments on the south-western axis, one must seriously ponder and wonder if our proposed undertakings will still make economic sense five years from today!
To make matters more worrying is the fact that through the construction and extension of the SGR to Eastern DRC by Tanzania which opens up a new alternative cargo transportation route to Tanga for DRC, Uganda is effectively being cut out of the transit transportation equation in the Great Lakes region. It certainly becomes of concern to the Ugandans whose blood of their countrymen has been shed in the forests of the DRC in an attempt to help those neighbors bring about semblance of peace and governance in their country. Now as it is turning out, just like how the Kenyans gained more advantage from South Sudan in which Uganda happened to have sacrificed and played a major role to help the country become a state, history is repeating with the DRC.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
This is the very reason, I have severally argued that in all the developmental undertakings that we propose to undertake as a country, be it in building power generation stations, be it in building or expanding airports or road highways, be it in building oil refinery and pipeline or be it in building the SGR and revamping the old metered gauge railway line, conventional wisdom demands that we do it with expediency.
It must be acknowledged that world economic and geopolitical ecosystem has never been as dynamic as the case is today. The demand and appetite for green and blue energy has been heightened to what previously used to be unpredictable levels thanks to the technological innovations and advancements that have been made globally. We can't keep on sitting and hatching our natural endowments and opportunities for ever hoping that the world will keep on statically wait endlessly for the so called final decisions to exploit them.
Technological advancements are continuously looking for innovative ways of providing alternatives to be able to assist innovators avoid or circumnavigate being held hostages by those who hold large deposits of world fossil deposits.
If we failed to exploit the competitive advantage or opportunities that we had 10 years ago, we might as well, opt to spend our energies and resources on only those undertakings that will stand the test of time in at least the next 20 years. Unfortunately, our current SGR quest may not pass this test.
