{A Chinese company has begun mapping routes on an $8 billion rail network in Uganda with construction work likely to begin in about three months, a government official said on Thursday.}
China Harbor Engineering—which earlier this week inked a deal to build a container port in Sri Lanka—has started mapping routes and engineering designs for a network of standard-gauge railway lines.
The route of the new lines will extend from Uganda’s eastern border with Kenya to Rwanda as well as to oil-producing South Sudan over the next four to five years, Suzan Kataike, the spokeswoman for Uganda’s works and transport ministry told The Wall Street Journal.
“The new standard-gauge lines will provide a cheaper and faster means of transport both for cargo and passengers,” said Ms. Kataike.
In May, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, South Sudan’s Salva Kiir and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame signed an agreement with China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang for a range of regional rail projects.
Kenya is constructing the initial phase of a line that will run from its port city of Mombasa.
The first phase of Uganda’s project will cover 1,000 kilometers, stretching from the country’s eastern border with Kenya to Kigali and Gisenyi, along the border with the mineral-rich but restive Democratic Republic of Congo.
In recent years the East African region has become a hot spot for investors following the discovery of oil and gas. But the region’s infrastructure remains among the least developed in the world.
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