a police station and an administrative building.

Despite this inaction, the project has proved intensely controversial, largely over local people’s concerns about the environmental and cultural impact of the port complex – the Lamu archipelago, which has played a leading role in Kenyan history, is a Unesco heritage site. These fears have been exacerbated by a perceived lack of transparency on the part of the Nairobi government, and an alleged failure to follow standard project planning protocols.

As things stand, it is difficult to see the Kenyan government, or its international investors, pressing ahead with Lamu and the Lapsset corridor masterplan, at least until after the standard gauge railway has reached Uganda, the price of oil has risen and South Sudan has returned to peace.

But the Lamu project is notquite dead. A consortium of investors led by the Development Bank of South Africa agreed in October 2016 to invest $1.9bn in the plan. A spokesperson for the South African government said the money was to go on building three berths at Lamu and a modern road to Isiolo, the town in central Kenya that will be the main waypoint for the Lapsset corridor. According to reports in the Kenyan press, work on a two-year dredging programme began in the middle of October and the first berth is expected to be ready in 2018.

It was also announced recently that Lapsset was one of 16 projects being considered by a group of state and non-state investors acting under the umbrella of the OECD, who have amassed a $20bn fund.