Category: Infrastructure
The Nested Tragedies of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway
Recently we've seen two new pieces of research on Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR,) which make for fascinating – if depressing – reading. They show that the project was doomed from the start by corruption and bad dealing from ...
No Excuses. China Exim Bank Rejects Uganda’s Appeal For Repayment Delay
Back in August, the Ugandan government asked the China Exim Bank for a repayment delay on the loans needed to build the $1.7 billion Karuma dam project. A week went by and the bank replied with a simple answer: no. The government had requested the repayment delay ...
Why Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway Was Doomed From the Start
Kenya's new multi-billion dollar standard gauge railway (SGR) was destined to fail even before it launched, argued Kenyan legal scholar Luis Franceschi in a new opinion column in the Nation newspaper. Franceschi joins a growing number of analysts who have long asserted that ...
Kenya’s Spiraling Debt Crisis Worsens as the Cost of Chinese Loans Mount, Currency Weakens and Exports Soften
Kenya is rapidly becoming the next flashpoint in the Africa debt crisis amid a dramatic increase in borrowing that threatens to submerge the economy. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) warned on Friday that the country's ballooning debt is ...
Port Competition Along Africa’s East Coast Intensifies With China as a Central Player
After the Dubai-based ports operator DP World was effectively pushed out of Djibouti by China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH), the Emiratis packed up and headed a few hundred kilometers down the coast to set up shop at the Port of Berbera in the self-declared ...
Construction Begins on a Massive New Chinese-Financed Cultural Center in Kinshasa
The Chinese embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that construction had begun on an enormous new art and cultural center in the capital Kinshasa. Work on the enormous new facility had been delayed due to COVID-19.
Algeria Opened the New Chinese-Built Mega Mosque
Algeria's new Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in Africa, hosted its first public prayers yesterday -- 18 months after the China State Construction Engineering Corporation completed construction. The new mosque, known locally as the Djamaa El-Djazair, occupies ...
China’s Rebuilding of TV Stations in Africa is a Great Way of Ensuring Long-term Positive Media Coverage
China's ambassador to Liberia, Ren Yisheng, toured the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) facility in Monrovia last week to inspect a $52 million upgrade to the channel that Beijing is funding. Part of the work being done is to facilitate LBS' transition from analog to digital ...
In One of His First Public Appearances as China’s New Ambassador to South Africa, Chen Xiaodong Reaffirms Beijing’s Commitment to African Infrastructure Development
China's newly-arrived envoy to South Africa, Chen Xiaodong, made one of his first public appearances on Tuesday in a webinar organized by the South African Institute of International Affairs. Speaking from the embassy in Pretoria, Ambassador Chen spoke for about thirty minutes at the beginning of the ...
A New Chinese-Built Egyptian Capital is Rising Out of the Sand Near Cairo
Egypt's new administrative capital located 45 kilometers outside of the current capital in Cairo is now taking shape and with towers rising from the barren, sandy landscape. The project's being built and financed by the state-owned construction giant China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC).
“Public Investment is a Thing of the Past,” Says the EIU’s Chief Africa Economist
While a growing number of African countries are furiously renegotiating their debts with various creditors, one question that keeps emerging is whether China will eventually resume lending these countries large amounts of money to build future infrastructure. The specific questions is ...
Reframing the Chinese Debt Crisis in Africa
Many African civil society stakeholders worry that China is going to take advantage of the worsening economic crisis to seize their countries' strategic assets. It doesn't matter that there aren't actually any precedents for these seizures, in the current era of "alternative facts" if people believe it ...