Uganda has invited international and regional contractors to bid for the $1-billion, 95-kilometer toll expressway project that links the country's capital, Kampala, to Jinja, a town known as the source of the Nile River.

The expressway, which is expected to be financed by the European Union, French Development Agency and the African Development Bank, is one of the five expressways being constructed in the landlocked nation under the country's second phase of the National Development Plan under a design-build-finance-operate-transfer model with a completion deadline of 2025.

In addition, the preferred contractor will manage toll collection on the expressway and provide tolling infrastructure. The contractor will also design, construct, integrate, operate and maintain an intelligent transportation system on the expressway.

The first 76 km of the Kampala-Jinja mainline expressway will have four lanes on either side for the first 3 km, three lanes for the next 32 km and two lanes for the remaining 41 km. The expressway has been designed for 120 km per hour.

Uganda National Roads Authority, a state agency responsible for development and maintenance of the country's national road network, says the remaining 18 km of the project will comprise the Kampala Southern Bypass, which will have two lanes on either side with a vehicle moving speed of 100 km per hour. Kampala-Jinja expressway is a critical portion of the Northern Corridor, a trade link to Kenya's port of Mombasa for Uganda, Rwanda, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Burundi.

In mid-June, Uganda commissioned the 51-km Kampala-Entebbe expressway project, the first expressway in the country, at a ceremony presided over by President Yoweri Museveni and Wang Yang, the third vice prime minister of China. The Chinese provided $350 million of the project's total $476-million cost. Construction started in 2012.