President William Ruto announced Saturday that Kenya has set aside about Sh5 billion to extend the country's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Voi into Tanzania, a move he said would strengthen cross-border trade and open new economic opportunities in the Coast region.

Speaking during a church service in Mwatate, Taita Taveta County, Ruto linked the proposed link to Kenya's ongoing SGR expansion toward its western border. "We are already extending SGR from Naivasha to Kisumu and to the Malaba border. As we extend that, it is also important to link Voi and Tanzania. We've already set aside around KSh5 billion for that project," he said.

The president said the planned railway would run through several parts of Taita Taveta County, with stations proposed for Mwatate, Bura, Mwakitau and Taveta before the line crosses into Tanzania. "You will be able to drop passengers here and carry cargo. Other places are being developed, so don't listen to those saying Taita Taveta should not be developed," he said.

Ruto framed the Tanzania link as part of a wider ambition to connect Kenya's rail network with other East African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kenya's ongoing Naivasha-Kisumu-Malaba SGR extension is already under construction, with the Naivasha-Kisumu section covering about 264 kilometres and the Kisumu-Malaba section a further 107 kilometres to the Uganda border. Kenya and Tanzania have separately discussed linking their rail networks through Uganda to reach the wider region.

Beyond the railway announcement, Ruto pledged that Taita Taveta residents would receive title deeds within the following week, addressing a long-running land ownership concern in the county, and promised further development projects for the area.

**Part of a wider Coast tour**

The Mwatate announcement came on the first day of an eight-day development tour of Kenya's Coast region, taking Ruto through Taita Taveta, Kwale, Kilifi, Mombasa, Tana River and Lamu counties. According to the official itinerary, the government plans to issue close to 190,000 title deeds across the six counties during the tour, beginning with 31,318 in Taita Taveta's Mwatate and Voi constituencies, followed by 94,175 in Kwale and 36,826 in Kilifi. State House says the government has issued more than 380,000 title deeds across the Coast region since August 2022.

The tour's other centrepiece is the planned groundbreaking of the roughly $15–16 billion (about Sh2 trillion) Dangote-linked East Africa Refinery in Lamu, which Ruto told the UN General Assembly last week he expected to break ground on "in one week," with a processing capacity of about 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day.