CHINA IN AFRICA
Kenya’s new railway opens East African business gateway
Mombasa, Kenya — Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday inaugurated a Chinese-built railway, the country’s biggest infrastructure project since independence, that is aimed at cementing its role as the gateway to East Africa. The boxy red-and-white diesel train left from a gleaming new terminal in the port city of Mombasa, carrying Kenyatta, Chinese dignitaries and citizens from across the country on its maiden journey to Nairobi. The five-hour journey will take less than half the time to drive between the two cities, a hair-raising trip on a one-lane highway clogged with lumbering trucks and where accidents claim dozens of lives each year. "Today we celebrate one of the key cornerstones to Kenya’s transformation to an industrialised, prosperous, middle-income country," Kenyatta said at the inauguration ceremony. Dubbed the Madaraka (Freedom) Express, the train can carry 1,260 passengers and replaces the "Lunatic Express" — a railway built more than a century ago by colonial B...
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