Uganda said Tuesday it had signed a $3 billion deal with a Turkish company to build an electric railway line that will link the landlocked country to neighbouring Kenya.

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) track will run from the Ugandan capital Kampala to Malaba on the border with Kenya, Transport Minister Katumba Wamala said.

“We signed a contract with Yapi Merkezi from Turkey for construction of a 272-kilometre (170-mile) line at euros 2.7 billion,” or $3 billion, Wamala told AFP.

He said construction on the line, part of a 1,700-kilometre regional rail project, was due to begin in November, and that Yapi Merkezi said the work would be completed within four years.

“With the railway network in place, Uganda hopes to overcome the long delays of transporting goods from Mombasa,” Wamala said, referring to Kenya’s Indian Ocean port city which is a major gateway for Ugandan trade.

The deal covers the construction of the railway and the supply of rail vehicles, Yapi Merkezi said in a statement.

Trains will run at up to 120 kilometres an hour and the project has a load carrying capacity of 25 million tons a year, it said.

“This should enable us to cut cargo transport costs by half,” Ramathan Ggoobi, permanent secretary at the Ugandan finance ministry, said in a government video shared online.

“I am telling you we are the second most expensive route in the world… now we should be amongst the most competitive.”

The Ugandan deal follows a separate agreement between the Turkish firm and Tanzania to construct an electric railway between the country’s key hubs.

Services on the SGR line connecting Tanzania’s main city Dar es Salaam with the capital Dodoma began in July this year.

Tanzania also reached a $2.2 billion deal in 2022 with a Chinese firm to build the final section of the SGR line aimed at linking the country’s main port with its neighbours.