Nairobi, Nov. 12 -- On Tuesday, I was in an auditorium at Barabara House, the headquarters of the Kenya National Highways Authority, in the company of a distinguished gathering of engineers who spent several hours establishing, with great rigour, that a bridge is safe. The bridge, it turns out, had already been cancelled by the government.

It was the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. While government is planning to bury the Japanese-funded Mombasa Gate Bridge at Likoni, the engineers who designed it pressed on at full steam, presenting, defending and fielding questions for a project whose death warrant had been decided.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Business Daily....