Kenya's Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) was officially launched on Wednesday. The line has been developed for passengers and cargo transportation between Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, and Mombasa, the country's largest port city.

The China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) began construction work in December 2014. The speed of the passenger train is 120 kilometers per hour, while the freight train will travel at 80 kilometers per hour. The new line will shorten passengers' journey time from Nairobi to Mombasa from 10 to five hours.

The new line is the first phase of a grand SGR project that aims to connect Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan, and is Kenya's largest infrastructure project since independence in 1963, involving a total investment of 3.8 billion US dollars. 

The Mombasa-Nairobi SGR has created more than 46,000 jobs for local communities, and provided training opportunities to over 45,000 people. As part of the project, many Kenyan youths went to China to receive training on railway operations.