China vows to keep funding African infrastructure projects despite debt-trap claims

China has promised to continue funding infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa, despite growing criticism that the investments burden countries with debt.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday as part of a four-day trip to Africa, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special envoy, Yang Jiechi, said Beijing was committed to continue partnering with Kenya and other African countries through the belt and road, a multibillion dollar plan by the Chinese government to link China, Europe and Africa through investment in rail, roads, ports, dams, power plants and bridges.

Delivering a message from Xi to Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Yang said infrastructure projects under the umbrella of the belt and road and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, an official forum between China and African states, were aimed at fostering intra-Africa commerce and inter-regional trade between Africa and Asia.

As part of the belt and road, Beijing is funding and building the Standard Gauge Railway. The first phase of the rail line, from the coastal port city of Mombasa to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, was completed in 2017 and cost US$3.2 billion. The second section, linking Nairobi to Naivasha, a town in the Central Rift Valley, is nearly done, at a cost of US$1.5 billion.

The plan is for the railway to reach Malaba, a town on Kenya’s western border with Uganda, where construction will continue into Uganda and other landlocked countries in the Great Lakes Region.

But Kenya has yet to secure funding for the third phase of the railway linking it to Kisumu and on to the Malaba border crossing. At that point, Uganda would take over construction to extend the line to Kampala and beyond.

During last year’s meeting in Beijing of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Kenya failed to get China to loan it the funds it needed to extend the rail to Kisumu.