The farewell visit of Tanzania’s outgoing President Jakaya Kikwete to Kenya, apart from much rhetoric, also yielded a concrete result as, together with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, he launched a major road construction project.
The road from Voi to the Tanzanian border at Holili/Taveta has been one of the most notoriously bad road stretches connecting two key areas of the neighboring countries and have been a huge obstacle in improving trade and tourism flows between the two East African Community (EAC) member states.
While the stretch to Mwatate on the Kenyan side has been tarmacked for some time already, the crucial link from the Sarova Taita Hills Lodge to the border is still in a horrific shape, often leading to safari operators shunning visits to Lake Jipe, Lake Chala, or Grogan’s Castle, all landmarks in their own right and worth seeing.
The road is financed by several sources including the African Development Bank and will open up parts of Tsavo East to tourist visitors previously often inaccessible when heavy rains turned the road into a quagmire of mud.
Kenyan tourism sources have confided that they harbor much hope that the next president elected by Tanzanians will resume friendly relations with Kenya similar to the 10 years of the Mkapa presidency when a record inflow of investments from Kenya to Tanzania took place.
The Kikwete presidency is now largely perceived as having harbored and even fueled anti-Kenyan sentiments, largely to the detriment of improved trade relations and the full implementation of several East African Community protocols. As a result, the three EAC countries of Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya formed the Northern Corridor Integration Projects partnership, aka the “Coalition of the Willing,” under which major infrastructure projects were agreed and notably a common tourist visa launched.
The integration of the airspaces have also been long in coming and is only one element in a long list of accomplishments, which includes the alignment of phone tariffs and passport-free travel among the three by citizens. The remaining road section from the Taita Hills to the border is estimated to take about a year and a half to be completed and will then no doubt become one of the most traveled new highways between the two countries.
Source: Eturbonews.com

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.