[SIZE=6]US firm likely to fund Kenya’s six-lane freeway[/SIZE]http://mobile.nation.co.ke/image/view/-/3392762/medRes/1444387/-/1103kk2z/-/higpic.jpg
A view of Nairobi’s Thika highway on March 1, 2015. Talks are afoot on financing the expansion of the Nairobi-Mombasa road to a six-lane freeway. PHOTO | ANTHONY OMUYA | NATION MEDIA GROUP
NEW YORK
Talks on funding the construction of a six-lane highway got off on the right foot after the Kenyan and US government and an engineering firm held a successful meeting.
Elizabeth Littlefield, head of the US government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), and the construction company signed a “letter of interest” regarding the Nairobi-Mombasa highway project on the sidelines of the US-Africa Business Forum in New York on Wednesday.
California-based Bechtel, one of the world’s largest engineering and construction companies, is also involved in the financing discussions.
The US Export-Import Bank is simultaneously working with Bechtel to secure investment for the 485-kilometre expressway.
It is intended to speed up commerce and travel between Kenya’s main port of Mombasa and cities throughout East Africa.
Opic’s role in the emerging deal would be to insure Bechtel against breach of contract.
Now that Kenya will attain donor country status soon, these our NGOs are an endangered species, might consider a Nairobi Aviation Engineering Degree… Anyway this is very good news all the same
anywhere you read american involvement in road projects is just hot air. kama ingekuwa chinese ama japanese expressing interest ningeamini. hizi ni hadithi tu za kawaida.
Having driven along MSA - NRB highway , it does not need a six lanes. That highway is virtually empty especially mid month when 95% percent of Kenyans are dead broke and cannot afford even shs 500 for petrol. It needs 4 lanes only for most part of the journey , with 6 lanes restricted to small bottle neck sections.
SGR will take a huge chunk of traffic off the road.
Bechtel is a major player in the evolving struggle to control the world’s future water supply. Bechtel and its peers have quietly been securing the rights to control the ‘production’ and distribution of this essential resource and fully intend to make huge profits in the future when, as experts predict, water becomes a significantly scarce ‘commodity.’
Bechtel and other large corporations have been able to obtain legal title to much of the world’s water supply through the process ofprivatizationwhereby goods and services previously considered part of thepublic domainbecomethe exclusive property of a wealthy class of elites.
