President Yoweri Museveni on Thursday, November 21, 2024, launched the construction of the 272-kilometre Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Malaba on the Kenyan border to Kampala Uganda’s capital.
The SGR project was established by Cabinet Minute 107 of 2025 to develop a modern, integrated, and efficient railway transport system to address both freight and passenger transportation needs of Uganda.
The first phase of the SGR project will take four years and will cost 2.7 billion euros (equivalent to 10.8 trillion shillings). The contractor is the Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi. It is jointly funded by the Government of Uganda and the African Development Bank.
While launching the SGR project in Tororo in eastern Uganda, President Museveni said the SGR will lower the cost of doing business in Uganda and the region while decongesting the road network.
The President said the SGR train will take only 24 hours or less to travel from the Port of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast to Kampala, unlike the current 14 days by the metre-gauge railway.
The cargo train, with the capacity to transport 1,000 tonnes of cargo, will travel at a speed of 100 kilometres per hour while the passenger train will travel at 120 kilometres per hour.
President Museveni said the government is also considering the construction of airports to accelerate economic growth and boost tourism.
In a post on his X handle, the President said: “Our transport system is irrational. Roads are overcrowded with cars and cargo. This leads to slow movement, increased traffic, and damaged roads. To solve this, cargo must move to railways and waterways, while petroleum products will be transported through pipelines”.
President Museveni said the government is already working on other investment and business cost-pushers such as electricity.
“Once we have cheap transport, cheap electricity, our labour is still not expensive, all will be well, as we deal with the issue of cheaper capital”, said the President.
The Minister of Works and Transport, Edward Katumba Wamala, said the SGR project aims to foster the country’s connection to the Indian Ocean coast.
Minister Wamala said the SGR railway would reduce the cost of transport by 50 per cent, from the current 3,200 to 3,500 dollars for transporting a cargo container from Mombasa Port to Kampala, to between 1,600 and 1,700 dollars.
On completion of the Malaba-Kampala, the SGR project will extend to the South Sudan border (Northern Route) and the Western Route serving the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The total SGR network will be 1,700 long.
Minister Wamala said the Ugandan SGR would be connected to the Kenyan one, which currently stops in Naivasha, but with a commitment to extend it to the Ugandan border, the timelines of which have been agreed starting in January 2025.
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