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World Bank Overtakes China as Kenya’s Creditor of Choice

by Eric Olander

There’s been a major shift in Kenya’s borrowing patterns over the past three years marked by a sharp increase in loans from the World Bank while lending from China has slowed considerably, according to new Treasury data.

Since 2019, loans from the World Bank more than doubled from $4.5 billion to $9.9 billion this year. This is a big shift from the early years of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s first term in office in 2013 when Chinese lending to Kenya skyrocketed from near zero to nearly $4 billion by 2017 to fund large-scale infrastructure projects like the Standard Gauge Railway.

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