48 TheEconomistJune 29th 2019
1F
or tendays in May Uhuru Kenyatta,
Kenya’s president, vanished from view.
Kenyans feigned concern on Twitter, using
the hashtag #FindPresidentUhuru. A miss-
ing-person poster appealed for informa-
tion on the whereabouts of a five-foot-
eight African male last seen in Beijing. A
government spokeswoman sought to reas-
sure the public: Mr Kenyatta had been in
his office “meditating”. But others specu-
late that the president was in a funk after
his trip to China failed to yield a new loan
for the next phase of Kenya’s ambitious
$10bn railway.
Mr Kenyatta could be forgiven for feel-
ing piqued. Beijing’s largesse to Africa has
sometimes seemed limitless (see chart). In
September China promised another $60bn
in aid and loans to the continent. Xi Jin-
ping, its president, promised the money
would come with “no political strings at-
tached”. John Magufuli, Tanzania’s strong-
man president, was delighted. The West, he
griped, made its money dependent on
“strange conditions”, such as insisting that
Tanzania should not lock up gay men. “Chi-na is a true friend,” he enthused. Its assis-
tance comes “free of charge”.
Being chummy with China has served
Tanzania well. It has received more than
$2bn in loans since 2010, reckons the Chi-
na-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hop-
kins University. In 2013 China agreed to fi-
nance and build a $10bn port in Bagamoyo,once a big slave- and ivory-trading entrepôt
but now a sleepy fishing village.
Kenya has done even better. It was an
early African member of the Belt and Road
Initiative, China’s global infrastructure
project. It scooped up at least $9.8bn be-
tween 2006 and 2017, making it Africa’s
third-largest recipient of Chinese loans.
Mr Kenyatta must have reckoned that
his railway project, on which he has staked
much political capital, was due another cut
of Mr Xi’s cash. Not only has it been one of
China’s highest-profile projects in Africa,
but Beijing has already doled out $4.7bn to
finance its first two sections. An almost
500km stretch between the port of Momba-
sa and the capital, Nairobi, is up and run-
ning. The second is nearly completed. Ken-
ya had assumed that China would fork out
the $3.5bn needed for the penultimate sec-
tion, to Kisumu on Lake Victoria. If China’s
ultimate vision was a railway network con-
necting resource-rich inland states to Indi-
an Ocean ports, why stop funding the pro-
ject halfway through?
Some Africans suspect that China delib-
erately lends countries more than they can
repay in order to seize strategic assets
when they default. They point to the Chi-
nese-financed port at Hambantota in Sri
Lanka. After the project flopped commer-
cially, a Chinese state-owned firm took
control. Hambantota would be a handy
place to park Chinese naval vessels seeking
to patrol the Indian Ocean. “The situation
that Sri Lanka got itself into may not turnChina and AfricaBeijing curbs its enthusiasm
NAIROBI
China’s lending to Africa is starting to mirror the West’sThe great haul of ChinaSource:CARIChinese loans to Africa, $bn0510152025302000 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 17Middle East & Africa
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