Northern Corridor: Mombasa to the Great Lakes

The agreement and the authority

The original Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Agreement was signed on 19 February 1985 and entered into force on 18 November 1986. It set a framework for transit trade through the Port of Mombasa ². The text signed in Nairobi on 6 October 2007 widened the focus from transit to an integrated development corridor ².

The agreement has 11 protocols. They cover port facilities, routes, customs control, documents, rail, road, inland waterways, pipeline, multimodal transport, dangerous goods and facilitation measures for transit agencies, traders and employees ².

The authority is an intergovernmental body. It runs four technical programmes: transport policy and planning, customs and trade facilitation, infrastructure development and management, and private sector investment promotion ¹. Its Transport Observatory tracks over 40 indicators of corridor performance ¹.

The 38th Council of Ministers met in Nairobi, in a report dated 26 June 2026. It asked member states to fast-track signing and ratification of the revised agreement. It directed the secretariat to fast-track customs systems integration and to work on removing non-tariff barriers ⁵.

Road routes and distances

The authority road network page gives these routes from Mombasa ⁴.

Road network by country

The authority puts the corridor road network at 12,707 km. Its country figures are Kenya 1,328.6 km, Uganda 2,072 km, Rwanda 1,039.4 km, Burundi 567 km, DRC 4,162 km and South Sudan 3,543 km ⁴. Those country figures add up to 12,712 km. The page does not explain the 5 km gap ⁴.

The EAC lists the corridor road through Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret, Malaba, Jinja, Kampala, Masaka, Katuna or Gatuna, Kigali, Nemba or Gasenyi, Kayanza and Bujumbura ⁶. The EAC gives two lengths. It says 1,700 km for the transit corridor and about 2,080 km for corridor 1 ⁶.

Port, rail and inland depots

The authority gives Mombasa a capacity of 2.65 million TEUs. The outer channel is dredged to 17.5 metres ⁷. It lists the port hinterland as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Tanzania, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia ⁷.

Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway runs 472 km from Mombasa to Nairobi and 120 km from Nairobi to Naivasha. The authority marks both sections complete ⁸. Commercial contracts for Naivasha to Kisumu (262 km) and Kisumu to Malaba (107 km) were signed on 24 March 2016. The page gives no completion status for them ⁸. A standard gauge mainline from Mombasa to Kampala is described as planned ⁸.

Metre gauge lines on the corridor total 8,206 km: Kenya 1,787 km, Uganda 1,221 km, DRC 5,033 km and South Sudan 165 km. The page says Rwanda has no railway network ⁸.

The Kenya Ports Authority manages inland container depots at Nairobi, Kisumu and Eldoret. They link to the Mombasa container terminal by rail ⁹.

Customs and cargo tracking

In 2014 the Northern Corridor authority directed partner states to harmonise electronic cargo monitoring. Kenya and Rwanda agreed to adopt the Ugandan system ¹⁰. The Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System launched in 2017. The three revenue administrations share one platform and one seal type, so seals no longer need to be removed at borders ¹⁰.

Writing in WCO News in February 2019, the URA project manager for the system said average transit time for cargo without tracking fell from 4.5 days in 2014 to 3.1 days in 2018. About 21% of transit cargo was tracked electronically as of December 2018 ¹⁰.

The authority lists the removal of multiple security bonds and customs declarations among its achievements, with the interfacing of customs systems. It gives no dates for these ¹.

What this page does not confirm

On 24 October 2026 the authority home page showed zero placeholders for its road, rail and cargo tonnage counters. No current corridor tonnage figure is given here for that reason ³.