The Mackinnon-Sclater road was a 970 km (600 mi)
ox cart track from
Mombasa to
Busia in
Kenya started in 1890 by the
British East Africa Company (IBEAC).[1][2] It superseded earlier caravan routes used by slave traders and explorers of the interior.[3]
The part of the road called the "Mackinnon road" linked Mombasa and
Kibwezi. It was built by an Australian called
George Wilson.[4] It was named after and partly financed by
Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet a founder of the IBEAC who wanted to increase trade with
Uganda.[5] The road was “of the simplest kind, Road surface|
unmetalled, and in fact, the roughest track along which a
bullock-cart would go” [6]
Captain Bertram Lutley Sclater of the
Royal Engineers continued the road from Kibwezi to the
Uganda border at Busia.[7][8]
The road as a means of long distance travel fell into disuse between 1896 and 1901 after the
Uganda Railway overtook it. Many of the cars later used in the interior were transported there by rail because the road journey was long, slow and difficult.[9]
^An Economic History of Kenya, edited by WR Ochieng' and RM Maxon, p131
^Road-Making and Surveying in British East Africa, p269, by G. E. Smith, 1899, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
^Official touring guide to East Africa by Automobile Association of East Africa, Henry J. Reuter, 1973