of modern cranes. The work was financed by a 0.2% interest, ¥32bn ($310m) loan from Japan.

The work was carried out by the Toyo Construction Company on a 100-acre site reclaimed from the sea. The next development was agreed in August 2016, when Japan agreed to lend Kenya $211m, and give it $60m, to build the first phase of the Dongo Kundu Special Economic Zone in Mombasa, due to be complete by 2019. This will include the development of another berth, as well as the $250m Mombasa bridge-and-causeway bypass (presently being built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation), electricity and water services.

The long-term Japanese masterplan for Mombasa, set out in a report published in October 2015, includes, among other things, the construction of another 1.1km of container berths anda standard-gauge railway, a motorway, two pipelines and a fibre-optic cable link between Lamu, Juba in South Sudan, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (see map above). Thrown into the deal were three regional airports, and a tourist resort.

The $3.1bn port project at Manda Bay in the Lamu archipelago was officially launched by former Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki in March 2012. The plan was to build a container terminal with 32 deepwater berths, with China Communication Construction Company completing the first three at a cost of around $480m.

However, the subsequent collapse of oil prices, and the relapse of South Sudan into civil war, have since relegated Lapsset to some way down the to-do lists of Nairobi and Beijing. In the intervening four-and-a-half years, all that has been built is