Good News for Kenyans as Another Most Used Highway Receives Funds for Expansion

The government has started looking for money at home to widen the 460-kilometre Nairobi-Mombasa highway, moving away from an earlier plan to hand the entire project to a foreign firm.

The Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) confirmed that its Director General, Luka Kimeli, met officials of a local bank on Tuesday, November 3, to discuss possible financing.

The agency said the talks centred on unlocking resources for major road projects, improving connectivity and opening up new trade opportunities. It added that such partnerships are key to connecting rural economies and changing how the country moves.

Besides the dualling of the Nairobi-Mombasa route, the discussions covered two other projects. These are the 253-kilometre South Rift-Lake Region Gateway Corridor under the Roads for Rural Economic Development Project, and a 500-kilometre ring road under the Lake Victoria Basin Development Roads programme.

The meeting comes about a month after the National Treasury began searching for a firm to help implement the highway expansion. That firm is expected to study traffic volumes, engineering needs, environmental and social impacts and overall costs to determine whether the plan is technically viable.

The multi-billion-shilling project will widen the road from two lanes to at least four, introduce controlled entry and exit points and charge motorists toll fees.

Treasury documents seen by Kenyans.co.ke indicate that cost-effective designs will be used to limit disruption to local connectivity while boosting capacity. Early estimates put the cost of upgrading the entire highway to a dual carriageway at about Ksh300 billion.

The shift follows the government’s rejection of a proposal by US infrastructure firm Everstrong Capital, which had offered to expand the whole road using private capital.

The National Treasury’s Public Private Partnership Committee turned it down in May 2025 after finding that it did not meet the requirements of the PPP Act, 2021.

Source; https://www.facebook.com/Kenyans.co.ke/posts/pfbid02B2RbAqciKoSRpcbti6SY23QF57i4KVsMv5BBVbKmKSuhnRgcardrRFnJiD3TvEnMl