On 1 June 2017 the Kenyan government celebrated the completion of Phase I of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project. Funded with loans from EXIM (The Export-Import Bank of China), the project, for which construction started in October 2014, now connects the port of Mombasa, the biggest seaport in Kenya, with the capital city of Nairobi, from which the Phase IIA of the project goes 120 kilometres further north-west and reaches the town of Naivasha. 1 The SGR is a flagship project of the national development programme "Vision 2030" that, focusing on mega-projects, aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrialised country, overcome its aid dependencies, and achieve a "middle-income status" in less than two decades (see Enns, 2019). In this context, the Kenyan government has celebrated the SGR as a promise of greater connectivity and "development."
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