Kenya: President Kagame Jets in for Northern Corridor Integration Projects Summit
President Kagame arrives in Kenya’s capital Nairobi to attend the 14th Northern Corridor Integration Projects Summit. PHOTO: URUGWIRO
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is in Kenya where along with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni as well as a Special Envoy of President Salva Kiir of South Sudan will today be hosted by their Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta in the 14th Summit of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) aimed at speeding up development of infrastructure in the East Africa region, according to Kenya’s State House spokesman.
The Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) which is a multilateral development initiative established in 2013 is aimed at speeding up development in the region, particularly the improvement of infrastructure for ease of movement of people, goods and services in the East-African region.
In a statement issued in Nairobi, Kenya’s State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the regional summit will be attended by host, President Uhuru Kenyatta, and his counterparts Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame as well as a Special Envoy of President Salva Kiir of South Sudan.
“During the Nairobi meeting, the leaders are expected to review the progress made in the implementation of the various resolutions reached at during the 13th Summit held in Kampala, Uganda on April 23, 2016,” reads the statement.
The NCIP are designed to link the land locked countries of Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Burundi to Kenya’s Indian Ocean Port of Mombasa. The corridor also serves the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Tanzania.
Among the key projects expected to feature prominently during the meeting is the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) where significant progress has been made with Kenya having successfully completed the Mombasa-Nairobi line and embarked on the Nairobi-Naivasha section which is now at 50 percent completion.
Leaders will assess and provide leadership on the progress being made in power generation, transmission and interconnectivity, and review progress on ICT and oil refinery.
The State House spokesman added that a commercial contract for the Naivasha-Kisumu-Malaba sections and a modern port at Kisumu has already been signed with the China Communication Construction Company.
He said preliminary engineering design of the new SGR line from Kampala to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, was completed in January while in South Sudan, preparation for a bankable feasibility study for the Nimule-Juba SGR line is on-going and is expected to be complete by December this year.
