The last truly ambitious infrastructure project to be completed in Kenya began in the late 19th century when British colonial authorities began laying railway track inland from Mombasa towards Uganda.
Along the way, workers were harried by lions, decimated by disease and frustrated by the defiant landscape. But three years and around 530 kilometres later, a small railway depot was built on a large swamp on a high plateau and named Nairobi.
Today, thanks largely to that railway line, Nairobi is Kenya’s capital, the beating heart of the regional economy bursting with the life of its three million-plus residents.
Now the authorities are hoping to repeat the trick with a £16 billion infrastructure project that will lay rail, road and pipelines across Kenya’s neglected north.…