Vol. 1, Issue 12, Part K (2015)

Abstract
One cannot fail to appreciate the significance of road infrastructure to the Kenyan economy. However, for close to 3 decades, Kenya’s road network has been in poor order resulting to a road infrastructure gap. Most of Kenya’s road infrastructure is in urgent need of maintenance, rehabilitation, upgrade and new construction so as to reduce the infrastructure gap in terms of quantity and quality. It will benefit the policy makers of the County and Central Governments to know to what extent is Kenya’s road infrastructure gap. Consequently, this study purposed to surgically analyze the state of Kenya’s road infrastructure gap. The study employed a descriptive analysis on Kenya’s road density, road indicators benchmarked against Africa’s Low and Middle-Income countries, and Infrastructure Index on Global Competitiveness. The results of the study indicated that Kenya’s road density was constant at 11km/100sq.km from 2000 to 2010 and grew to 28km/100sq.km in 2011; there is a 234% deficit of Paved Road Density and a 12% deficit of Unpaved Road Density in Kenya when compared to MIC. Additionally, it was found that there exists a road infrastructure gap in Kenya of 66.7%, 28.2% and 25.6% to France, Rwanda and South Africa respectively. This study may be particularly useful to the policy makers of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.