Buckle-up speed demons: Kampala-Jinja Expressway to be the fastest road in East Africa

December 30, 2024 in Business, Infrastructure, Trade & Industry, Transport by Editor

The proposed Kampala-Jinja Expressway KJE, whose construction is expected to start in the near future, will be one of the fastest roads in Africa, and definitely the fastest in East Africa, when it goes into service in a few years’ time.

With a design speed of 120 kilometres per hour, the 73-kilometre main section of the KJE, will be 10 kilometres faster than Kenya’s Nairobi-Thika highway and at par with South Africa’s N1 to N18 national roads, on which the speed is capped at 120kph on the open sections and 100kph within the urban centres they traverse. That speed will also be about half the 250kph allowed to special vehicles along a 120 kilometre stretch of South Africa’s N14highway between Kakamas and Pofadder in the Northern Cape.

The road will have 8-lanes for the first 4 kilometres to Kinawataka, 6-lanes between Kinawataka and Mukono and thereafter 4-lanes to Jinja.

According to officials familiar with the status of the works, the KJE whose construction is poised to start as soon as funding is secured, has been designed to be faster than the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway whose maximum speed is 100kph.

The KJE will be the first plank in an expansive master plan that envisages development of a national expressway system that will also cover the Jinja- Malaba sector, Gulu-Kampala Expressway and Kampala-Masaka-Mbarara Expressway among others.

Though there have been delays in concluding funding arrangements for the PPP K-JEW, officials are confident it is only a matter of time before the project gets off the ground.

“The future is very bright. The will to deliver them is not extinct and the Jinja Expressway project is getting off the ground soon,” 256BN has been told.

With an engineer’s estimate of USD 1.1bn, the road will span a total length of 95Km. The Project will comprise a 77km mainline and an 18km bypass to the south of Kampala city, connecting to the Entebbe Expressway. It will be executed in 2 phases, starting with 33km of the Kampala-Jinja Mainline commencing at Kampala and terminating at Namataba and the Kampala Southern Bypass. The second phase will be 43.7km of the Kampala Jinja Mainline commencing at Namataba and terminating at Jinja.

It will have a design speed of 120kph on the 73km main sector, multiple flyovers, tunnels, over 40 overpasses and 12 toll plazas among other key features. Before its functions were merged into the Ministry of Works and Transport, the Uganda National Roads Authority UNRA, had already secured right of way for 45Kms of the 95Km project corridor. More than 4,000 project affected persons PAPs have already been compensated.

Procurement for the civil works contractor has been going on in the background, with bidders expected to make final submissions to their bids before end of this year, and selection of a contractor in early 2025.

In addition to a private sector partner, the KJE project is also backed by development partners including African Development Banks AfDB, The French Agency for Development AFD, the EU and the World Bank.

Of the estimated USD1.1bn project cost, the government of Uganda is expected to contribute USD 267 million. The money will be borrowed from the African Development Bank and the French Agency for Development.

The loan requests have already been presented to the lenders. Both loans have a grace period of eight years and a 25-year maturity period. The tentative interest for the African Development Bank component is 2.25 percent, with a commitment fee of 0.25 percent for the non-disbursed amount.

The loan from the French Development Agency will attract a tentative interest of 1.5 percent while failure to pay commitment fees will attract a 0.5 percent annual interest on non-disbursed amounts.

The billion-dollar project forms part of the Northern trade corridor from Mombasa in Kenya through Kigali in Rwanda. This is a strategic corridor which serves as a trade link to the sea for landlocked countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan as well as the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Conceived in 2010 the project will be the first in Uganda to be built in the country using a public-private partnership model. This means that the winning contractor will design, develop, and operate the route for 30 years, earning profits by charging tolls before transferring the ownership to the state. Road transport is the dominant mode of transportation in Uganda, accounting for over 95pc of passenger and freight traffic.