‘It is the greatest achievement of a teacher to enable his students to surpass him,’ these words of the famous computer scientist John G Kemeny (1926-1992) flawlessly caption why President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is the late President Mwai Kibaki’s best legacy.
Uhuru Kenyatta cut his adult political teeth in the Grand Coalition government, where he was President Kibaki’s Finance Minister as well as Hon Raila Odinga’s deputy in the Prime Minister’s office. Two powerful positions that thrust him into the deep end of Kenya’s murky power and politics topography, from 2008 to 2012.
Nine years after ascending to the presidency in 2013, President Kenyatta has built and tarmacked more roads than the first three administrations and the colonizers did in 123 years. Whereas the 3rd President in ten years built 2,000 kilometers of tarmacked roads, President Uhuru Kenyatta has built approximately 12,000 kilometers of the same. With 2,000 of those in his Mt Kenya backyard alone.
In Uhuru’s first term 3,200 kilometers of road were built, while in his second term 8,600 kilometers were built, more than double the work he did between 2013 and 2017. President Uhuru built three times more roads during his handshake with Raila Odinga than he did without it.
In the last 8 years and for the first time since independence, Kenya is now linked to four of it’s neighbors by tarmacked roads. Only Somalia is not. Before 2013, only South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia that had not been linked by tarmacked roads. Since then, South Sudan and Ethiopia have been linked to Kenya by tarmack.
An extra 660 Kilometers of new road has been built to connect the Kenya-Tanzania border points of Lunga Lunga and Mwatate-Taveta. For us to connect with our neighbors, 1,570 Kilometers of new road had to be built to link Kenya to South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.
To complete Kenya’s road link to all its neighbors, the government is constructing a 120-kilometer road from Hindi to Kiunga, linking Somalia. Once complete next year, When this is complete next year, all the five neighboring countries will be connected to Kenya by tarmacked road for the first time in 128 years.
