A Port Rises, and a Coastline Pays the Price
By Chemtai Kirui | Lamu, Kenya

At first light in Manda Bay, the water looks undisturbed. Dhows cut quietly across the channel, the tide slipping through the mangroves as it always has. But further out, beyond the shallows, the horizon has changed.

The ships are back.

For years, the Port of Lamu sat in uneasy stillness, its deep-water berths waiting on a promise that did not quite arrive. Built as part of the LAPSSET corridor, it was meant to redraw trade routes across شرق Africa. Instead, it lingered in the shadow of Mombasa, handling modest cargo, its scale out of sync with demand.

That changed in early 2026.

The surge was not driven by domestic demand or long-term planning. It was, in effect, a forced windfall—triggered by disruptions far beyond Kenya’s shores.

A spike in tensions in the Gulf—enough to disrupt movement through the Strait of Hormuz—has pushed shipping lines to look elsewhere. Routes have shifted. Insurance costs have climbed. And in that disruption, Lamu has found its moment.

Insurance premiums for vessels entering the Gulf rose sharply in the wake of the disruption, pushing shipping lines to seek safer and cheaper alternatives along the East African coast.

What is happening in Lamu reflects a broader shift in global trade. Shipping routes are no longer organised purely around efficiency, but around risk—where vessels move not just to save time, but to avoid uncertainty.

The scale of the shift is hard to overstate. In 2024, Lamu handled just 74,380 metric tonnes of cargo. A year later, that figure had climbed to 799,161 tonnes—an increase of nearly tenfold.

“Lamu is no longer a promise; it is a fully functional transshipment hub,” says Capt. William Ruto, managing director of the Kenya Ports Authority.

By early 2026, the acceleration was sharper still. In the first weeks of the year alone, 74 vessels had already docked—matching traffic that once took years to build.

In March, a single vessel offloaded thousands of vehicles originally bound for the Gulf—an early sign of how global routes were being quietly redrawn.

Ships that once bypassed the Kenyan coast are now docking here, offloading vehicles and containers for transshipment inland. In the first months of the year, vessel traffic has already matched what the port handled over several previous years combined.

For many operators, Lamu has become a holding point rather than a destination. Extended storage terms and lower handling costs make it cheaper to offload cargo here than to keep ships waiting in uncertain waters.

Most of what arrives here is not meant for Kenya. It sits—sometimes for weeks—waiting to be moved elsewhere. In effect, Lamu is functioning less as a gateway and more as a floating warehouse.

For the government, it is a rare alignment of timing and infrastructure. For a port once dismissed as premature, the numbers now suggest vindication.

Shipping lines are not choosing Lamu by accident.

“What we’re seeing is transshipment logic,” says Capt. Abdulaziz Mzee, general manager for the port. “Cargo is being offloaded here and redirected inland or along safer routes.”

 

But along the shoreline, the story reads differently.

To receive the new class of vessels, the channel into Manda Bay has been dredged deeper, cutting into the seabed to accommodate their draft. The work is largely invisible from the surface. Its effects are not.

Beneath the hulls, the damage is harder to see but easier to measure.

Kenya is already losing about 1% of its seagrass each year, according to Dr Lilian Daudi of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. In Manda Bay, she says, dredging has accelerated that loss, as suspended sediment settles over the seabed, smothering the meadows that anchor marine life.

 

Along Kitangani beach, the impact is visible without instruments. Channels that once carried tidal water into mangrove forests are now blocked by dredged sand. What remains are dry roots and scattered shells — what local conservationists describe as a “sand grave”.

Fishermen speak of waters that no longer behave the way they used to. Seagrass beds—where fish spawn—have thinned. Coral systems, once stable, are clouded by suspended sediment. Along parts of the coast, mangroves stand in patches of grey, their roots exposed where sand has been displaced.

In places like Kitangani, dumped dredge sand has blocked tidal channels entirely, leaving behind stretches of dead mangrove and shell-strewn flats where water once flowed.

Across Kenya’s coast, scientists estimate seagrass coverage is already declining by about 1% each year. In Manda Bay, researchers say dredging has accelerated that loss, disturbing nursery grounds that sustain coastal fisheries.

“Seagrass systems are extremely sensitive to disturbance,” says Dr. Lilian Daudi of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. “Once sediment is suspended, it reduces light penetration and affects the entire ecosystem.”

 

Nearly every household here depends, in some way, on the health of that ecosystem.

For Mohamed Somo, who represents local fishermen, the change is measured in distance and time. Fishing trips that once took a day now stretch into several. The catch is less predictable. The nearshore waters, he says, no longer provide.

“You go further out now,” says Mohamed Somo, a local fisheries leader. “Sometimes you stay for days.”

“The fish are no longer here,” he says.

Fisheries data collected by local Beach Management Units shows a steady decline in catch per unit effort — the clearest signal, scientists say, that breeding grounds are under stress.

The disruption is not new. In 2018, a court ordered compensation for thousands of fishermen affected by the port’s construction, recognising the loss of access to traditional fishing grounds. Payments have followed in phases. But money has not restored the system that sustained those livelihoods.

“What we are seeing is development that extracts value without restoring what is lost,” says Khadija Shekuwe, a community advocate with Save Lamu.

What is emerging instead is a pattern familiar in large infrastructure projects: gains concentrated at the centre, costs absorbed at the edges.

The port’s current success also carries a different uncertainty. Much of the traffic now passing through Lamu is not rooted in long-term trade demand, but in a temporary rerouting of global shipping. Maritime analysts describe it as opportunistic—cargo finding the safest available path in a moment of geopolitical strain.

If those conditions shift, the traffic may move with them.

Without its full hinterland connections—particularly rail links into Ethiopia and South Sudan—Lamu remains partly disconnected from the inland markets it was designed to serve. Its current role is less that of a destination than a stopgap.

That tension—between immediate gain and structural limitation—is at the heart of what is beginning to take shape along this coast.

 Because the port is working. But it is working in a way that depends on forces far beyond it, while reshaping an ecosystem much closer to home.

Along the mangrove edge, the tide continues to move in and out, carrying silt, salt and whatever the channel now releases into it. The fishermen still set out each morning. The ships still arrive.

Nearly 70% of households in Lamu depend directly on mangroves for income, food or fuel. Yet studies following the port’s construction suggest fewer than half now say those needs are being met.

“These ecosystems support both biodiversity and local economies,” says Cecilia Olima, a researcher working on coastal development pathways. “When they are disrupted, the impacts are immediate and deeply felt at household level.”

Mangroves here are not just trees but carbon stores, and scientists warn that continued degradation could turn them from a sink into a source of emissions.

Maritime analysts caution that the current boom may not last.

“This kind of surge is often episodic,” says Andrew Mwangura, a maritime expert. “The question is whether Lamu can sustain traffic once global routes stabilise.”

Lamu’s rise is not the result of long-term planning alone. It is a response to a more uncertain world—one in which trade routes bend under pressure, and backup options become essential.

 

The question is whether that moment will last. If the disruptions that brought ships here ease, the traffic may move on just as quickly as it arrived.

 

What would remain is a port that briefly sat at the centre of global trade—while the communities beside it continued to wait.