Kenyan violence disrupts traffic flows

AS VIOLENCE in Kenya continues to grab the headlines following the disputed general elections, Kenya’s high commissioner Thomas Amolo told FTW last week that cargo was continuing to flow despite the unrest. “All imports are coming in and the road from Nairobi to Mombasa is in good shape. It was recently upgraded with help from the European Union and the Chinese and it’s a good road – there’s no insecurity with regard to public transportation and goods being trucked into Nairobi and to the border with Uganda,” he said. However a different picture was painted by a forwarder on the route. “We ship cargo to Mombasa and move it by road via Kenya into Uganda – and we’re finding difficulty getting goods into Uganda. At the moment our containers are stuck in Mombasa and we have no other alternative – if we use Dar es Salaam, there’s a five-day berthing delay,” he told FTW. And he foresees little respite in the near future. Similarly Chennaionline reports that the unrest has severely affected United Nations humanitarian supplies to several African countries, prompting the world body to ask the government to establish safe corridors for uninterrupted flow of aid. The UN Office at Nairobi (UNON) reports that transport corridors from the Port of Mombasa through Kenya have been restricted, disrupting supply chains to humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in areas such as Southern Sudan, Uganda and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).