Chinese build new highway to "lost" Kenya

By C. Bryson Hull

NEAR ISIOLO, Kenya (Reuters) - After a century of broken promises, a paved road linking Kenya to Ethiopia is no longer a mirage for a desert region choked by remoteness.

Hurling up a cloud of blinding white dust, Chinese road engineers are helping to lay down the first kilometers of tarmac to replace a 530-km (330-mile) forbidding rock track that joins Kenya's farms and port to landlocked Ethiopia.

The stretch of road from Isiolo to Moyale on the border is one of the last unpaved sections of the Great North Road, a British colonial dream to connect Cape Town to Cairo.

But where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years.

In what is a now familiar sight across Africa, China's drive to secure minerals, oil, and a place for its workers and industries to thrive is converging with Kenyan government plans to tap the potential of undeveloped regions.

The road could turn promises of oil into reality and increase tourism and trade in a starkly beautiful land where, until now, only banditry, desolation and poverty had flourished.

"This progress is going to benefit the whole area for tourism. Once it is finished, we can already see more trade," said Wu Yi Bao, project manager for the state-owned construction company China Wu Yi (Kenya) Co.

China Wu Yi is building the road with 4.3 billion Kenya shillings ($63.94 million) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Kenyan government.

According to AfDB estimates, paving the road between Isiolo, 340 km (211 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, and Moyale could boost trade between Kenya and Ethiopia along that corridor fivefold to $175 million from the present $35 million annually.

Trade between China and Kenya last year was worth $959 million, a 48 percent rise over 2006, according to the Chinese embassy in Kenya.

'NOT PART OF KENYA'

The tarmac of the Cape-to-Cairo road goes missing at the squared-off edge of pavement at the end of Isiolo.

Here one finds all the restless bustle of a quintessential border town because residents say it's the frontier between the "Kenya Mbili" -- Swahili for the two Kenyas.

"People in the north feel like they are not part of the country," said Hussein Sasura, assistant minister for Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands. "When someone leaves for Nairobi, people say he has gone to Kenya."

Hopes are high that the revamped road will draw more tourists and create more revenue for the people living here.