It’s Exciting to See New Infrastructure Open Up the Kenyan Coast

By Rajul Malde

When you live and work in an urban hub like Nairobi, perhaps as one of the fortunate affluent or a busy corporate executive, it is incredibly easy to lose sight of how severely industrial development can be constrained by a lack of basic infrastructure.

Driving through the Nairobi metropolis, you are constantly enveloped by progress. You encounter sprawling industrial parks along Mombasa Road, fancy new bypasses and, increasingly common, skyscraping residential developments that redefine the skyline by the month. It is a bubble of rapid connectivity. This visual abundance can easily make anyone forget the fact that a massive portion of the transformation that truly drives nations happens far outside capital cities, very often in rural and remote areas.

Take Pwani Oil, for example. Millions of Kenyans wake up every day and use our products, including the Sawa, Detrex and Ushindi brands of soap and Fresh Fri cooking oil, all of which have become deeply rooted household essentials. Yet, I highly doubt the average Kenyan consumer realizes that these goods are manufactured in Kikambala, Kilifi County, over 500 kilometers away from the capital where most assume our primary factories sit.

We have always believed in the potential of Kilifi, and that is why we established our footprint here, and have for decades employed hundreds of local residents besides actively engaging in community water and education projects.  But for just as long, getting the household products we manufacture from our factory floor to distributors in Nairobi, western Kenya and neighboring East African markets has been a true endurance test. This is because the vital road networks connecting Kikambala to the rest of the country have historically been either completely un- or under-developed. For us, this shortfall has always meant managing massive logistical realities because for a very long, the main artery for this commerce—the Mombasa–Malindi highway—was a notoriously congested, narrow two-lane road.

One broken-down truck near Mtwapa or a bottleneck at the old Nyali bridge area could paralyze supply chains for hours, sometimes days. Those hours translated directly into capital tied up on the tarmac. When you scale that across an entire region, poor infrastructure acts as an invisible tax on local production, while making Kenyan products less competitive across the region.

There is absolutely no need, therefore, to explain how profoundly excited we, as manufacturers, are to finally see new, world-class road networks rapidly opening up to connect the Coast. The  dualing of the Mariakani–Bamba road and the aggressive expansion of the Mombasa–Mtwapa–Kwa Kadzengo–Kilifi highway are completely rewriting our economic destiny.  This is as the construction of the modern Mtwapa Bridge and the widening of the highway into a dual carriageway directly address the historic gridlock that used to isolate Kikambala from Mombasa Port. Furthermore, the strategic development of the Dongo Kundu Bypass, which links the Mombasa-Nairobi highway to the South Coast without forcing transit cargo through the congested island city center, is a logistical masterpiece.

What do these roads mean for Pwani Oil, the people of Kilifi and the country at large?

First, the new developments imply drastically reduced transit times. Trucks that used to crawl through bottlenecks can now move seamlessly, ensuring your favourite supplies reach supermarket shelves predictably. For us, the manufacturer, the transformation means lower operational costs from reduced fuel waste and much lower wear and tear on our transport fleets. We can now reinvest those savings back into manufacturing efficiency and product innovation right within Kikambala. Finally, there is an expected spur of local economic ecosystems, with the improvement of infrastructure bound to spur secondary businesses in Kilifi.

Ultimately, the infrastructure boom is quickly proving that when the government deliberately invests in high-capacity infrastructure in places like Kilifi, it unlocks the latent potential of rural communities, creating manufacturing jobs where they are needed most. It also means stopping the unsustainable rural-to-urban migration and spreading national wealth more equitably.

The writer is the Commercial Director at Pwani Oil Products Limited