Welcome to the southern route

For this, among other reasons, it is comforting to know that an alternative route will soon be available to secure the nation’s strategic interests.

The business community and all Ugandans will feel some measure of relief knowing that the government is looking ahead at what may happen in Kenya following the election in early March.
Hard lessons were learned in 2007 when some Kenyans believed that Uganda somehow manipulated the election in favour of Mr Mwai Kibaki, the outgoing leader of that country, and started attacking commercial traffic bound this way.
The resulting scarcity of fuel alone, since supplies could not get through, almost brought this country to its knees.
Therefore, it was quite liberating to learn this week, that after so many years of cajoling, Uganda’s leaders finally sat down with their counterparts from Tanzania and saw the mutual interest in resurrecting the southern route to the seaport of Dar es Salaam.
Uganda has unnecessarily been too dependent on only the eastern route. The inherent risk in that dependency is that there have been times when one sensed that someone was holding someone at ransom.
Last year, for instance, the Kenya Ports Authority and the revenue people acted rather provocatively in enforcing a certain non-tariff barrier to trade which seriously rattled non-Kenyan business. The matter has not been fully resolved since posting of an insurance bond in cash as proof that you will pay due taxes, or not dump goods in Kenya, remains.
For this, among other reasons, it is comforting to know that an alternative route will soon be available to secure the nation’s strategic interests.
The Great Lakes hinterland holds the promise of large business. And Kenya’s Mombasa port takes a larger share of import cargo destined for Uganda, South Sudan, eastern DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Its near-monopoly could partly explain the less than brotherly way in which authorities sometimes treat non-Kenyan users of the port. But with a potential for competition between Mombasa and Dar es Salaam once facilities are fully in place, prospects suddenly look brighter for all and sundry.
Hopefully, the ultimate beneficiary of this development has to be the final consumer of the goods imported.
This is because the southern route offers a peculiar advantage of cheaper waterborne and rail-based transportation across Lake Victoria which should cut costs by almost half, and encourage traders to offer more favourable prices.