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Calls Growing Louder in Kenya to Balance Lopsided Trade With China

by Eric Olander

All week, numbers have been trickling out of Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics that depict a dangerously lopsided economic relationship with China. The latest data show that last Kenyans $3.9 billion worth of products from China but exported just $131 million in return.

“This is unacceptable,” declared Kenya’s most influential financial newspaper, Business Daily, in an editorial today. “As things stand, Beijing is benefiting vastly from its commercial ties with Nairobi while the latter remains in a losing trade position,” the editorial board wrote.

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