The Fragile Lifeline: Quantifying Political Risk to the LAPSSET Corridor from Regional Conflict Dynamics

The Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, known as LAPSSET, was conceived as the largest infrastructure undertaking in East African history: a 32-berth deep-water port at Lamu, a 1,700-kilometre highway network, a railway line, and an oil pipeline linking Kenya’s coast to landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan, at an estimated total project cost of over $25 billion (LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority, 2023). The strategic rationale made perfect sense. In practice, the project has run directly into one of the most persistently violent security environments on the continent, and the quantitative record of that collision is, by any serious reading, a warning to international investors that the project has become much more dangerous and expensive to fund, and it might stay that way for a long time.

The clearest evidence comes from the Lamu-Ijara-Garissa access road, a 453-kilometre section contracted to the China Communications Construction Company in April 2021 for 17.9 billion Kenyan shillings. The road was scheduled for completion by May 2023. By the end of that year, it remained largely unfinished, after a sustained al-Shabaab campaign that killed dozens of workers and destroyed construction equipment valued at over 200 million Kenyan shillings (Daily Nation, 2024). In January 2023 alone, three separate attacks killed at least 14 people in the corridor zone, including four KeNHA road engineers killed by an IED in Bura East on January 11, 6 workers killed in a convoy ambush on January 17, and 3 people, including 2 police officers, killed between the Hayley LAPSSET Camp and Garissa on December 21 (The Star, 2023). By late 2024, the persistent threat had forced the Chinese contractor to abandon the site entirely (The Star, 2025).

Al-Shabaab conducted 37 remote violence attacks in Kenya across 2023, a figure that ACLED data show was trending upward year-on-year, with March 2024 recording double the number of al-Shabaab events compared to the same month the previous year (ACLED, 2024a). The majority of these attacks were concentrated in Mandera, Garissa, Wajir, and Lamu counties, which is to say precisely the counties through which LAPSSET’s critical road sections are routed (ACLED, 2023).

The northern flank: pastoralist conflict and the Turkana-Isiolo corridor

The al-Shabaab threat in coastal and northeastern Kenya is made worse by a qualitatively different but equally disruptive security problem along the corridor’s northern trajectory through Turkana, Samburu, Marsabit, and Isiolo counties, where competition over land and water between pastoralist communities has produced sustained and escalating political violence. ACLED recorded more than 990 political violence events in Kenya in 2022, with Turkana registering nearly 70 reported fatalities from Pokot militia attacks on civilians and clashes with state forces, the highest fatality count of any county that year (ACLED, 2023). In the first quarter of 2023, ACLED recorded 69 political violence events involving pastoralist militias in the North Rift region alone, a 77% increase compared to the final quarter of 2022, with violence accounting for almost 30% of total political violence in Kenya during that period (ACLED, 2023b).

The Kenyan government launched Operation Maliza Uhalifu in February 2023 in direct response, deploying a joint military and police force across Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet, Laikipia, Samburu, Turkana, and West Pokot counties. ACLED recorded over 30 battle events between pastoralist militias and security forces in the months that followed, including Kenyan military airstrikes targeting militia hideouts in Baringo in March 2023 (ACLED, 2023c). The operation produced a temporary reduction in violence, but levels increased again after September 2023, following the general trend of tactical suppression without structural resolution (ACLED, 2024b).

These counties are not central to LAPSSET. The Isiolo-Moyale-Hawassa road (505 kilometres) and the Isiolo-Lokichar-Nadapal-Torit-Juba road (700 kilometres), two of the corridor’s most critical highway components, cut across this exact geography. According to the Kenyan Auditor General’s report for the year ending June 2024, both of these highways are either incomplete or have yet to start construction, with delayed implementation directly denying the public benefits the project was designed to deliver (The Star, 2025).

The Security-Development Gap: Conflict Escalation vs. LAPSSET Progress (2021–2025)

Dual axis line chart on flourish:

Sources: ACLED (2023, 2024a, 2024b); The Star (2023, 2025); Daily Nation (2024); The Star (2025). 

The Ethiopian dimension

The Ethiopian section of the corridor faces a structurally distinct but equally severe risk. The Isiolo-Moyale-Hawassa road is designed to connect with Ethiopia’s highway network at Moyale on the Kenya-Ethiopia border, passing through Oromia region before reaching Addis Ababa. From January through November 2024, ACLED recorded over 9,000 fatalities from the concurrent Fano insurgency in Amhara and the Oromo Liberation Army conflict in Oromia, the two Ethiopian regions most relevant to corridor connectivity (Freedom House, 2025). The OLA insurgency, now in its eighth year as of April 2026, has rendered several zones in East and West Wollega, Kellem Wollega, and Horo Guduru Wollega very insecure, precisely the zones through which road and rail links connecting Addis Ababa to Moyale must pass (Africa Practice, 2025).

The combination of a June 2026 general election in Ethiopia, contested by 23 parties under conditions of active insurgency in 2 of its most populous regions, adds a near-term political risk layer on top of the structural security one. A low-legitimacy electoral outcome in Amhara or Oromia is likely to deepen rather than resolve the insurgencies, piling onto the corridor’s risk exposure on its Ethiopian flank at exactly the moment when international investors are being asked to commit to the project’s next phase.

Policy recommendations

The corridor’s investors and partner governments face a risk environment that is not incidental to the project, but structural. 3 targeted interventions would materially improve the corridor’s political risk profile.

First, a dedicated LAPSSET security protocol must be formally operationalised under the Kenya-Ethiopia Defence Cooperation Agreement signed in September 2025. General Charles Kahariri and Field Marshal Birhanu Jula’s agreement provides the institutional basis for joint rapid-response deployments along the corridor’s cross-border sections, but the agreement’s protocols have not yet been translated into corridor-specific operational procedures (Military Africa, 2025). Formalising a joint rapid-response unit with a mandate that explicitly covers infrastructure protection would reduce contractor exposure and signal risk mitigation to international financiers.

Second, the World Bank and African Development Bank, both co-financiers of LAPSSET components, should condition disbursements on the Kenyan government establishing a community benefit framework in the corridor’s adjacent counties. The radicalisation pipeline from marginalised youth in Lamu, Garissa, Mandera, and Turkana to al-Shabaab recruitment is well-documented (Saferworld, n.d.). Infrastructure that passes through communities without generating local employment or compensation does not reduce this pipeline; it deepens it.

Third, the proposed dissolution of the LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority, approved by Kenya’s Cabinet in 2025, should be suspended pending an independent review of its implications for project governance. Absorbing LAPSSET’s mandate into parent ministries at a moment of peak construction disruption and contractor withdrawal would further diffuse accountability for a project whose governance failures the Auditor General has already documented in detail (The Star, 2025).

LAPSSET remains, in theory, the most transformative infrastructure project in eastern Africa’s post-independence history. The quantitative record of the last 4 years makes clear, however, that theory and practice are currently running in opposite directions. Without a serious, coordinated political risk mitigation strategy, the corridor risks becoming what one analyst has already called it: a pipedream (The Star, 2025).

References

ACLED (2023a) ‘Context assessment: Increasing security challenges in Kenya’, 2 March 2023. Available at: https://acleddata.com/report/context-assessment-increasing-security-challenges-kenya (Accessed: 24 April 2026).

ACLED (2023b) ‘Kenya situation update: March 2023, government operation against pastoralist militias in North Rift region’, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 31 March. Available at: https://acleddata.com/update/kenya-situation-update-march-2023-government-operation-against-pastoralist-militias-north (Accessed: 24 April 2026).

ACLED (2023c) ‘Kenya situation update: August 2023, government operation brings calm to North Rift region’, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 4 August 2023. Available at: https://acleddata.com/update/kenya-situation-update-august-2023-government-operation-brings-calm-north-rift-region (Accessed: 24 April 2026).

ACLED (2024a) ‘Kenya situation update: April 2024, Kenyan security forces combating al-Shabaab, pastoralist militias, and mob violence’, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 19 April 2024. Available at: https://acleddata.com/update/kenyan-security-forces-combating-al-shabaab-pastoralist-militias-and-mob-violence-april-2024 (Accessed: 24 April 2026).

ACLED (2024b) ‘Kenya: Al-Shabaab, pastoralist militias, and the M23, January 2024’, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 19 January 2024. Available at: https://acleddata.com/update/kenya-al-shabaab-pastoralist-militias-and-m23-january-2024 (Accessed: 24 April 2026).

Africa Practice (2025) ‘Ethiopia’s 2026 electoral dilemma’, Africa Practice, 3 December. Available at: https://africapractice.com/insights/ethiopias-2026-electoral-dilemma/ (Accessed: 20 April 2026).

Daily Nation (2024) ‘Al-Shabaab ghosts haunt Sh17.9bn LAPSSET project’, Daily Nation, 18 February. Available at:https://nation.africa/kenya/news/al-shabaab-ghosts-haunt-sh17-9bn-lapsset-project-4528782 (Accessed: 20 March 2026).

Freedom House (2025) Freedom in the world 2025: Ethiopia. Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/country/ethiopia/freedom-world/2025(Accessed: 20 March 2026).

IFA (2026) ‘LAPSSET’s security turn and the new politics of connectivity’, Institute for Foreign Affairs, 8 March. Available at:https://www.ifa.gov.et/2026/03/08/lapssets-security-turn-and-the-new-politics-of-connectivity/ (Accessed: 20 March 2026).

LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority (2023) Brief on LAPSSET. Nairobi: Government of Kenya.

Military Africa (2025) ‘Kenya and Ethiopia seal defence pact amid rising regional tensions’, Military Africa, 9 October. Available at:https://www.military.africa/2025/10/kenya-and-ethiopia-seal-defence-pact-amid-rising-regional-tensions/(Accessed: 20 March 2026).

Saferworld (n.d.) ‘Inside Kenya’s war on terror: The case of Lamu’. Available at: https://www.saferworld-global.org/long-reads/inside-kenyaas-war-on-terror-the-case-of-lamu(Accessed: 20 March 2026).

The Star (2023) ‘Four killed in IED attack on convoy in Bura-Garissa highway’, The Star, 11 January. Available at: https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2023-01-11-four-killed-in-ied-attack-on-convoy-in-bura-garissa-highway (Accessed: 20 March 2026).

The Star (2025) ‘LAPSSET gamechanger project a pipedream as key projects stall’, The Star, 27 July. Available at: https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2025-07-27-lapsset-gamechanger-project-a-pipedream-as-key-projects-stall (Accessed: 20 March 2026).