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The African Development Bank (AfDB), a major financier for Kenya decided to limit its funding to infrastructure projects focused on transport and water.
The African Development Bank (AfDB), a major financier for Kenya decided to limit its funding to infrastructure projects focused on transport and water. AfDB says these two sectors will greatly boost Kenya’s job creation agenda given the intense human labour needed to complete the projects. The focus on roads will improve transit time for public service vehicles from 40 km/hour to 60 km/hour in 2028. The AFDB had a total of 51 ongoing projects in the country as of July last year.
This decision is aimed at prioritizing areas that have the highest potential to boost economic productivity. The upcoming shift, scheduled from this year until 2028, will impact energy projects, as they currently rank third in beneficiaries of the pan-African lender’s portfolio for infrastructure funding in Kenya.
The Bank adopts a different approach in Kenya to selectivity, narrowing the broad infrastructure projects to only two sectors, namely transport, and water and sanitation, to enhance productivity and competitiveness, noting that water will involve dams and irrigation that support greater agricultural productivity in a review of its Kenya funding programme. Benefits of targeted projects AfDB says the two sectors will greatly boost Kenya’s job creation agenda given the intense human labour needed to complete the projects.
It is revealed that transport projects account for 37 per cent of the total funding to Kenya. Similarly, increased funding of water projects would drive water used by industries to 16,000 cubic metres per day in 2028 from 1,500 cubic metres in 2022 while water treatment capacity will increase to 6,000 cubic metres from 1,000 cubic metres in the same period.
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The AFDB had a total of 51 ongoing projects in the country as of July last year. Some of the big projects that AfDB has funded in Kenya include the USD 111.3 million dialling of the Kenol-Sagana-Marua Road and the Last Mile Electricity Connectivity programme meant to link low-income Kenyans to electricity. The AfDB is also partly financing the USD 546.7 million Thwake Dam project to supply Makueni, Machakos and Kitui water and generate electricity.
