Four years into President Ruto's infrastructure push, key highways like Rironi-Mau Summit and Isiolo-Mandera face fresh delays. Here's where each major project actually stands.
When William Ruto campaigned for the presidency in 2022, roads were never just roads. They were the centrepiece of a story he told voters — that the next four years would look and feel different because tarmac would reach where it hadn't before, and congestion in the cities would finally ease. Four years on, that story has run into the same thing every ambitious infrastructure plan eventually meets: reality, financing, and time.
The record, as it stands today, is neither the triumph the administration would like to claim nor the failure critics are quick to allege. It's something messier — a set of major projects moving at different speeds, some genuinely close to delivering, others quietly slipping deadline after deadline.
The Rironi-Mau Summit Highway: A Timeline That Keeps Moving
Start with the biggest one. The Rironi-Mau Summit highway expansion, a roughly Ksh184-200 billion undertaking depending on which official figure you use, was meant to transform the notoriously congested Nairobi-Nakuru-Western Kenya corridor. Ruto launched it in November 2025 under a Public-Private Partnership structure, bringing in China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) alongside the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) as financiers and builders.
The project wasn't born clean. It was originally awarded to French firm Vinci Highways SAS under the Kenyatta administration, but that deal collapsed in March 2025 amid disputes over proposed toll rates and the government's payment obligations. What emerged in its place was the current CRBC-NSSF arrangement, with a second contractor, Shandong Hi-Speed Road and Bridge International Engineering, taking on the Gilgil-Mau Summit stretch.
Since then, the completion date has moved more than once. Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) has set June 2027 as the official technical target, even as Ruto has pushed contractors to finish earlier — first suggesting Madaraka Day 2027, then later floating April 2027 in public remarks. Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir has stuck to the June 2027 date as the one motorists should plan around.
There is, however, a nearer-term milestone that matters more to ordinary commuters: the Rironi-Naivasha section. Both Ruto and Chirchir have said this stretch should be dualled and opened to traffic by the end of October 2026, meaning drivers could start benefiting from the upgrade well before the wider corridor — running all the way to Mau Summit — is finished. As of a July 2026 site inspection, the CRBC section sat at roughly 15 percent complete, with the Shandong-run section at about 10 percent.
Green Park Terminus: A Small Project With a Long List of Missed Dates
Not every delayed project is a highway. The Ksh2 billion Green Park Terminus Pedestrian Underpass in Nairobi is a smaller, more localised piece of infrastructure — a 500-metre underground network meant to separate pedestrians from the chaos of the Haile Selassie Avenue-Uhuru Highway roundabout — but it tells a similar story of shifting timelines. It was originally expected to open in September 2025, after reportedly reaching 88 percent completion by May of that year. That date slipped to December 2025, then again to June 2026.
KeNHA and CRBC are behind the build, which is designed with more than just pedestrian safety in mind — solar-powered CCTV cameras feeding into KeNHA's control room, and an on-site police post with a holding facility, are part of the plan.
Isiolo-Mandera: The Long Game in Northern Kenya
Further from the capital, and largely outside the news cycle that follows Nairobi's road projects, the 740-kilometre Isiolo-Mandera highway is quietly one of the most consequential projects on this list — precisely because northern Kenya has waited so long for this kind of connectivity. At an estimated Ksh168 billion, the project is now roughly 60 percent complete, but its finish line has moved from an initial 2028 target out to June 2030.
Unlike some of Ruto's other flagship projects, financing here isn't in question. The World Bank is funding 508 kilometres of the route, the African Development Bank is covering the Elwak-Rhamu section, and Arab development banks are backing the Samatar-Wajir stretch. The delay appears to be about implementation timelines rather than a scramble for money — which, depending on how you look at it, is either reassuring or a sign of how complex a project this size really is.
Thika Expressway: A Promise Still Waiting on Groundbreaking
Then there's the project that exists, for now, mostly as a promise. In February 2026, Ruto told residents in Thika that he would return in September to break ground on a 60-kilometre expressway aimed at relieving the perpetually congested Thika Road corridor — invoking the JKIA-Westlands expressway as the model. "I have a plan," he said at the time. "I will return here in September to begin construction of the expressway from Thika."
September has arrived, and so far, there's been no major government announcement confirming that construction has actually started. It remains, for the moment, a project in the waiting room — a commitment made publicly but not yet backed by visible action on the ground.
What Is Moving: JKIA-ABC Place
Not everything on this list is stalled. Work is progressing on a Ksh4.5 billion project to widen, landscape, and beautify the 27-kilometre JKIA-ABC Place route, again involving KeNHA and CRBC. Heavy excavation and underground drainage construction are underway, and crews are also repairing sections of the highway damaged during construction of the Nairobi Expressway.
The Pattern Behind the Delays
Taken together, these projects point to a consistent pattern rather than isolated failures. The government's own explanation leans on the complexity of financing large infrastructure, shifting project requirements, and the awkward business of restructuring deals inherited from previous administrations — the Rironi-Mau Summit saga being the clearest example of that last problem.
Four years into Ruto's presidency, the honest scorecard reads: real progress in places, genuine delivery on some fronts, and a string of broken deadlines that Kenyans will be watching closely as 2027 — an election year — approaches.