EAC to get $1B loan to improve ports
Dec 02, 2014
The World Bank will loan East African nations $1.2 billion to improve inland waterways and ports in Kenya and Tanzania, as part of efforts to boost integration in the region.
The World Bank will loan East African nations $1.2 billion to improve inland waterways and ports in Kenya and Tanzania, as part of efforts to boost integration in the region.
The bank said the funds will be used to revive inland waterways on Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria and improve handling capacity and efficiency in the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam ports.
The five-nation East African Community, which also comprises Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and has a combined $110b economy, is working to package cross-border infrastructure plans to make them more attractive to potential financiers. Oil and gas discoveries in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have turned the region into an exploration hotspot.
“The World Bank Group’s investments and support to reforms anticipate the boom of extractives in the region and will facilitate easier movement of people, goods and capital,” the bank said in a statement issued at an EAC meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
It said the funding was to help the bloc’s investment plans over the next three to seven years.
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