While the Red Sea Collapsed, Kenya Quietly Built the Alternative

Kenya is building a 580km highway from Lamu Port across northern Kenya to Ethiopia and South Sudan — the LAPSSET corridor's most important missing link, and East Africa's newest trade route. On 15 February 2026, 3 cargo ships docked at Lamu Port at the same time. The first 3 berths of a deep-water port that critics had spent a decade calling a white elephant were finally working. But the port was never the point. The point is the road behind it — a corridor cutting across some of the most remote terrain in East Africa, toward 2 countries with no coastline of their own. Ethiopia is the world's most populous landlocked country, with more than 130 million people and over 90% of its trade moving through a single neighbour. South Sudan depends on a pipeline crossing a country at war. And Mombasa, East Africa's main gateway for over a century, handled more than 2 million containers in 2025 while running close to full capacity. This video looks at why Kenya is building a highway through a region that spent most of the last century without paved roads — what is already finished, what is still 417km from done, and who else is competing for the same cargo. 📌 We covered the full LAPSSET corridor in an earlier video — linked    • Why Ethiopia and South Sudan Are Banking o...   #Kenya #LAPSSET #LamuPort #superhighway