China is in detailed talks with Kenya over turning a one-lane road running around 200km from the outskirts of Nairobi northwest to the town of Mau Summit into a four-lane dual carriageway to boost the economy, South China Morning Post reports.

In 2020, a French consortium led by Vinci had signed a €1.3bn public-private partnership agreement to upgrade the road, known as the A8, but the new government of President William Ruto opposed the agreement over the price and the fact the road would be tolled.

Ruto said discussions with China were at an advanced stage after a visit to Nairobi by Li Xi, the seventh-ranking member of the Communist Party’s politburo, on Monday.

The policy shift follows a meeting between Ruto and Chinese President Xi Jinping in September before the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

Mau Summit is a node of the Northern Corridor, one of the main trade arteries in East Africa. The corridor also contains the Naivasha Special Economic Zone, set up to capitalise on the SGR.

Ruto is anxious to expand the A8 to stimulate economic activity in the zone.

The president also said talks were continuing to extend the country’s new standard gauge railway (SGR) from Naivasha to the lake city of Kisumu and then onwards to the border town of Malaba.

China Export-Import Bank funded the 590km first phase of the railway, which was built by China Road and Bridge, a subsidiary of China Communications, for about $5bn.

But the SGR hasn’t been a commercial success, and in 2018 the bank refused further funding until the business case was established for the whole of the line.