Treasury lines up KSh42bn toll deals for Nairobi Southern and Mombasa Northern bypasses

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Motorists on Nairobi’s Southern Bypass could start paying tolls under a concession the National Treasury has valued at KSh12.265bn, while a planned bypass north of Mombasa would be built partly on toll income.

The two projects, worth KSh42.26bn together, appear in Treasury public-private partnership (PPP) disclosures first reported by Business Daily on Sunday. The disclosures have not yet been posted on the PPP Directorate’s website.

Southern Bypass: tolls on a finished road

The 28.6km Southern Bypass, which runs through Lang’ata and Kikuyu to link Nairobi and Kiambu counties, is complete and in use. According to the disclosures, it is earmarked for an operations, maintenance and tolling concession worth KSh12.265bn under a “user-pay: tolls” model, meaning the road’s running costs would be met by the motorists who use it rather than by the Exchequer.

A proposal by the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) to introduce tolls on the road is awaiting approval, the Treasury said.

For now, upkeep of the road is paid for out of fuel levy money. In February, KeNHA advertised tender KeNHA/R5/265/2026 for a performance-based contract to maintain the Nairobi Southern Bypass (A8_S), “to be funded through Road Maintenance Fuel Levy Fund (RMLF)”. A tolling concession would move that cost to the road’s users.

Mombasa Northern Bypass: grant plus tolls

The planned Mombasa Northern Bypass is a 38.6km KeNHA project in Mombasa County. It has two parts: a 27.1km main road from Miritini on the Mombasa-Nairobi highway (A8) to Kwa Kadzengo in Mtwapa on the Mombasa-Malindi road (A7), and an 11.5km Bamburi Link Road joining the new bypass to the A7 at Bamburi.

Its proposed investment value is KSh30bn under a “user tolls; viability gap funding (VGF)” model. In practice, the government would pay part of the construction cost as a grant and the private investor would recover the rest by charging tolls.

Mombasa’s other bypass is further along. The PPP Directorate’s status report to June 30, 2026 shows that a concept note to toll the Mombasa Southern Bypass, also known as the Dongo Kundu Bypass, was approved in September 2025 and that the feasibility study was still ongoing. The same report lists the Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway among projects at an early stage of preparation.

Why the Treasury wants tolls

The Treasury has estimated a road funding gap of KSh1.5trn over five years and KSh4trn over a decade, according to the Business Daily report, and is looking to tolls to recover the cost of completed roads, maintain them and raise money for new ones. On the 27km Nairobi Expressway, charges range from KSh170 to KSh500 depending on distance and vehicle class.

The disclosures did not give a timeline for either concession, proposed toll rates or the number of bidders expected. Other roads in the PPP pipeline include the James Gichuru-Rironi stretch of the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, for which the government is seeking a private investor to finish and toll the road. The fuel levy that funds much of today’s road maintenance has also been used to securitise pending bills.