President Uhuru Kenyatta landed at the Kenya Navy Mtongwe Base, Mombasa, to launch Kenya Shipyards Ltd, a company under the Kenyan Defence Forces.
The President was joined by ODM leader, Raila Odinga, and Defence Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa, among other senior military officers at the KSL commissioning on Friday, December 17, 2021.
Uhuru proceeded to inspect the new Mombasa Shipyard which is the largest in Sub Saharan Africa and it is expected to save Ksh68 billion per ship in maintenance every 10 years.
"Launched in May this year by President Kenyatta in Kisumu County, KSL was formed as part of Govt efforts to expand the contribution of the blue economy to Kenya's socio-economic transformation, and has a broad mandate of catalysing shipbuilding activities in East Africa," State House said in a statement.
This project has been hailed for being progressive allowing Kenya to stop sending ships, boats and ferries to the Netherlands for repairs.
It costs the taxpayers Ksh4 billion for every ship taken to the Netherlands or Spain for servicing. Kenya has 17 military ships and they undergo a full makeover every 10-15 years.
Ships, including foreign ones, will be drawn from water and secured at the yard for repairs, a few metres from the Mombasa port.
The shipyard is 120 metres long, 30 metres wide and 20 metres high boosts of four main workshops - an electronic repair workshop, a marine and general engineering workshop, a fitting and carpentry workshop, a hull and superstructure repair workshop.
"Kenya will for the first time have the capacity of building ships longer than a standard football field. It will have a capacity of building ships 150 meters long, with a tonnage capacity of 4,000 tons," Coast Regional Coordinator, John Elungata, stated.
He also explained that the new shipyard will also create 10,000 jobs in the sector since the country will now be spending maintenance costs locally.
