Lunatic express was not viable. It was an imperialist race to the bottom. It's purpose was domination to control the source of River nile and ultimately control the downstream countries. Sir Charles Elliot even wondered why it was built in the first place. There were no minerals or commodities to transport back to the sea. The 5m pounds could have done more wonders.

Sunk-cost fallacy- Reasoning that further investment is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in the further investment.

E.g. investing in KQ shares then management goes on shopping spree then forcing banks to convert loans into equity then taking over JKIA, then more rights issue to salvage the investment.

I have read many opinions suggesting that the OBOR is more for political gain than pure economic value. Government projects cannot be looked at from a pure profit perspective and we all know this.

Viability of the railway line has to also factor in other intangible gains like reduced degradation of the roads etc.

But importantly for me the selling point is just comparing our transport network with those of other countries we aspire to be like, do that and lets talk viability

Yes I agree with you OBOR is more political than economic. China has been trying to get out of the containment policy imposed by the US. It has succeeded in this respect by breaking out of the south china sea coming over to the Indian ocean. Ultimately it will dominate the Eastern seaboard of Africa and slowly push the US to the Atlantic. Which is why US is offering the Express way to undermine the SGR. There goes your argument on degradation of the roads.

If 60% of the Cargo is terminating in Nairobi there was no need to go beyond Nairobi as most of the containers are shipping out empty. Comparing our transport network to those we aspire to be like is the wrong approach, are we going to get bullet trains too? Our economy will not produce cargo to utilize SGR capacity for another 40-50 years. It's a terrible mistake to commit 20% of your GDP to one project.

Please state the benefits.

All projects should have a return on investment, especially projects of this scale. These don't have to be quantified by monetary terms but can be modelled economically. If this project was really viable a feasibility study would have been done BEFORE the project outlining all these. A feasibility study was technically done but it's never been made public. Ndii shared a page from it which had unrealistic projections and is why I question the viability.

It is expensive debt and if a project cannot service it's debt especially if it was mooted in it's ability to repay it's debt we have a right to be very worried. This cost will be borne at the expense of healthcare, education and the likes.

Finally, read the feasibility study on Thika Superhighway and see it's cost benefit analysis. Good day.