By Michael M. Phillips

LAMU, Kenya -- Al Qaeda militants are disrupting one of Africa's most ambitious infrastructure projects, forestalling Kenya's plans for establishing a new regional trade hub on the Indian Ocean.

For decades, Kenya has planned a $25 billion economic corridor across its impoverished north, with roads, rail lines and an oil pipeline in a 500-yard-wide strip of land connecting the port of Lamu to landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Progress, however, has slowed to a crawl, in good part because al-Shabaab, a violent Islamist group based in neighboring Somalia, has attacked road construction crews and security forces in the area.

"There's no proper road, there's no railway, there's no pipeline," said Yusuf Hassan Abdi, a member of the security committee in Kenya's parliament. "So this is a white elephant."

The Chinese-built Lamu Port sits virtually empty, with just three of 23 planned berths completed, and a sprawling container yard with no shipping containers. Just two inbound cargo freighters unloaded here between its opening in 2021 and the end of last year. A few others have unloaded cargo onto smaller ships which then sailed to their actual destination, Mombasa, a shallower port farther down the Indian Ocean coast.

Virtually all outbound shipping traffic consists of cattle and Merino and Dorper sheep marched to the port and loaded onto ships bound for Oman, hardly the sort of industrial activity the government envisioned.

"There hasn't been much activity," a port official acknowledged, but added brightly that recently, "we had a livestock ship with 8,000 animals."

The elaborate plan, conceived in 1975 and officially launched in 2013, envisioned deep-water berths laid out along the mangrove-lined shores of Lamu County. Cargo would travel on new roads and rail lines to Moyale, on the Ethiopia border, and Nakodok, on the South Sudan border. Oil from Kenya's isolated Lake Turkana region would travel to the coast by pipeline. Three international airports would be built along the corridor, along with resort cities.

The project, backers predicted, would transform the economic life of northern Kenya, which has been largely left behind compared with the rapid growth around Nairobi, Kenya's capital, and Mombasa, its only major port city.

"We believe this project will be a game-changer for the people of Kenya, " said Salim Bunu, Lamu regional manager of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor.

Money has been short, with the Kenyan government always strapped for funds. And on a key, 150-mile stretch of road, from the port to the town of Garissa, the threat of militant attacks has put a stopper in the hoped-for flow of shipping containers.

"As of now, we just have one corridor, and we just have one major port," Bunu said, referring to Mombasa. "If any floods or anything happens, that means there is no evacuation route for goods and people."

The vision, however, has been slow to become reality.

Al-Shabaab, an Islamist extremist group affiliated with al Qaeda, has been fighting an insurgency against the Somali central government for nearly 20 years, at one time holding the country's capital, Mogadishu.

Hundreds of U.S. commandos and other troops are deployed to Somalia to help local forces battle the militants. Kenyan forces are among African units backing Somali soldiers.

Al-Shabaab fighters often take refuge in the Boni forest, which straddles the Somalia-Kenya border, and have conducted shock attacks on targets in Kenya, including the massacre of 67 people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013. In 2020, militants attacked a joint U.S.-Kenyan base near the site of the Lamu Port, killing three Americans.

Al-Shabaab has found sympathizers on the Kenyan side of the border, particularly among the Bajuni people along the coast.

In the 1960s and '70s, Kenya's post-independence government resettled Kikuyu people from the central highlands and gave them title to land on the coast. They now constitute a large share of Lamu County's population, creating tension with the Muslim Banjuni and other local groups, who typically survive by fishing.

Many Banjuni feel the Kenyan government has favored Kikuyu newcomers with schools and other programs, giving al-Shabaab a pool of potential recruits, said Abdi, the parliamentarian. "There are sleeper cells all over," he said.

Roads are a specific target. New thoroughfares make it tougher for al-Shabaab to operate. It is harder to bury booby-trap bombs in tarmac than dirt, and security forces respond more quickly on finished roads.

"Security comes in an SUV," said Theo Aalders, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn. Al-Shabaab's "actions suggest that they're aware they're stalling the project."

During the first two years of attempted construction of the road, beginning in 2021, 16 people were killed and 40 wounded in militant attacks, including Kenyan and Chinese workers, according to Patrick Mutahi, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies, a Nairobi think tank.

Al-Shabaab attacks resulted in 30 deaths among civilians and security personnel between January and November last year across Garissa and Lamu counties, though not on the road itself. At least 23 militants died in retaliatory operations.

"They do surprise attacks and go back to Somalia," said Mutahi. "The security considerations are huge. It is quite delayed."

The violence led the government to send in the army, and work progresses 3 miles at a time -- if that -- to allow security and construction workers to move in tandem.

Military camps, surrounded by corrugated metal guard posts, line the road. Armored vehicles peek out of the bush. Pakistani engineers, employed by the Chinese state-owned contractor, China Communications Construction, wear body armor and helmets as they supervise Kenyan workers.

In one incident in 2023, a buried bomb -- triggered by a militant with a remote detonator -- hit one of four security vehicles escorting a convoy of engineers on a road inspection, according to one person who was on the scene. The attack ended in a firefight, with the engineers forced to take cover in a ditch. A few escorts were slightly injured, the person said.

Nonetheless, project supporters remain hopeful. "It is the most phenomenal thing that could happen to Lamu," said Monicah Muthoni Marubu, a member of parliament from Lamu County. "A project of that magnitude takes time."

But just 15 miles of the vulnerable Lamu-Garissa road -- 10% of the stretch -- have been successfully tarmacked, according to a government official. The Chinese contractor's early work failed to meet quality standards, and the Kenyans forced the company to start again, according to Kenyan project officials.

China Communications Construction didn't respond to a written request for comment.

The continuing violence raises questions about whether the government could protect freight traffic on the road even if it were completed. "We don't have the capacity to police that whole corridor," Mutahi said.

And the railroad remains a distant prospect. "It might never even be done in our lifetimes," said Benard Musembi Kilaka, lecturer at Kenya's Maseno University.

Write to Michael M. Phillips at Michael.Phillips@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 08, 2025 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

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