Editor,

RE: "It’s not easy to mobilise funds for SGRs” (The New Times, June 7).

Let’s indeed face facts: Rwanda cannot afford not to be connected to both! The cost savings, increased volumes, and significant reduction in input costs from shifting the bulk of our outward and inward cargo from high-cost road to much lower cost rail haulage should eventually pay back the initial outlays for the rail construction, many times over.

The only issue left is the sequencing of construction of the two routes, but even here the decision has been made for us: We cannot afford to wait the many years Kampala envisages to take to first complete the route to South Sudan before it starts construction of the southern route from Kampala to the Rwandan border.

But we certainly need and must work on both routes.

Mwene Kalinda