The $3 billion Lamu Port is part of an ambitious $23 billion regional transport corridor known as LAPSSET, or the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, launched nearly a decade ago, in 2012. From the start, the 32-berth port has faced opposition from local businessmen who depend heavily on tourism and fishing, as well as from environmental groups. The transport corridor is intended to ease the flow of goods between Kenya and its two northern, landlocked neighbours while easing congestion at Mombasa, East Africa’s busiest port, further to the south. Lamu Port has the potential to become a premier transhipment hub for all cargo destined for the continent.
Currently, there are few useable roads and no railways crossing the continent, but a route between Dakar, on the Atlantic Ocean, to Lamu, on the Indian Ocean, would have to pass through several impoverished countries mired in conflict. Domestically, the port is the terminus of an infrastructure project designed to open up Kenya’s long-neglected and isolated northern areas. Lamu Port is intended to serve the upper northern region of our country. The whole objective is to ensure the issue of marginalization is dealt with once and for all. Much of the transformation promised by the vast infrastructure project remains to be realized, but the port has already angered some locals.