Page 34 - NILE EXPLORER

Special Report

LAPSSET: LAPSSET and The Great Equatorial Land Bridge project.

Lamu port, Kenya is under construction, is part of the

Kenya’s Mega Infrastructure Project

with regional aspirations

n its original and most ambitious imagined 2010–2011, was an oil export pipeline from LAPSSET corridor demands investment on a
Iform, the Lamu Port-South Sudan- South Sudan to a 32-berth free port and scale without precedent in the history of the
Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor a merchant refinery at Lamu, from which region-USD 24-30 billion. The project has
project would be transformative, enormously a pipeline would run to Ethiopia. These been seen as an example of an infrastructural
expensive, and very invasive, linking a major pipelines were to be accompanied by highways renaissance in Africa, with the sources of
new port development on Kenya’s Indian and standard gauge railways carrying both international investment and governance
Ocean coast to South Sudan and Ethiopia passenger and cargo trains. Three new for such megaprojects coming from both
with an oil pipeline, railway and highway. international airports and Dubai-like resort the East and the West. But funding-whether
Current circumstances make it unlikely that cities were proposed for Isiolo, Lake Turkana private or public from any global pole-has
the pipeline will reach South Sudan or that and Lamu. A series of development zones not been forthcoming on the scale necessary
the railway will be completed within this were envisaged along the corridor: special to push this project forward as envisaged.
decade or the next. economic zones, export processing zones LAPSSET was originally predicated on the
The development of a new transport corridor and agricultural growth zones. According to export of South Sudan’s oil through Kenya.
in Kenya has long been a project in search the plan, LAPSSET would serve to relieve the From the outset, however, many doubted
of a rationale. Unfortunately, when finally existing overburdened Northern Corridor the economics of-and Juba’s dedication to-
It found one in the form of Kenyan and running from Mombasa via Nairobi to such an undertaking. The civil conflict that
Ugandan crude oil-even without reliance Uganda. erupted in South Sudan at the end of 2013
on oil from South Sudan, where civil strife In March 2012, Mwai Kibaki, then President has cast further doubt on South Sudanese
continues and whose geo-economic interests of Kenya, was joined by South Sudan’s cooperation.
remain a moving target-regional dynamics President Salva Kiir and the late Meles A different configuration of LAPSSET has
and geo-politics seem to have conspired Zenawi, then Prime Minister of Ethiopia, now emerged, focused solely on the pipeline
leaving Kenya alone to implement the for the launch of LAPSSET at the site of the and less dependent on Juba’s involvement.
LAPSSET. project’s proposed port in Kililana, Lamu Oil discoveries in north-western Kenya offer
The LAPSSET project has complex origins. County, Kenya. More than nine years later, a strong national rationale for an export
The port at Lamu and the pipeline from progress towards realizing this grand vision pipeline, albeit on a smaller scale, with
Southern Sudan to the Kenyan coast remains modest, but significant, particularly Uganda having exited the project.
appear to have been proposed separately given that Kenya is single handedly pushing The various components of LAPSSET took a
in the 1970s. Only decades later did these forward, in the hope that in the long run, at long time to coalesce on paper. Proposals for
different elements come together under the least, South Sudan and Ethiopia will revisit a large deep-water free port at Manda Bay in
banner of LAPSSET, a project which draws their interests in the project, despite the Lamu first started to receive serious official
its momentum from multiple sources-from lingering questions about the timetable and consideration some 45 years ago, predating
regional power relations; from Kenyan financing. by several years the idea of a crude oil export
politics; from a vision for integrated regional Long before the ground-breaking ceremony pipeline from then Southern Sudan.
development; and from contractors and in 2012, the planning and implementation
speculators who see it as an opportunity to of this project faced what some considered When Mombasa, Kenya’s only deep-water
derive private wealth from public investment. to be insurmountable political, technical, port, started to experience congestion, the
idea of a second port came under discussion
Integral to the detailed plans formulated in financial and security obstacles. The maximal and Lamu was seen as a possible site. The few

34 | The Nile Explorer 008