Posted on 10/14/2023 11:35:42 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The first section of Kenya's Chinese-built railway was opened with much fanfare in 2017 - but two years later work on the tracks stopped in the middle of the country and the master plan of linking it to other landlocked countries in East Africa seems to have derailed.
This means the project is not bringing as much money as was hoped at this stage, while Kenya is left servicing loans totalling around $4.7bn (£3.9bn), mainly borrowed from Chinese banks.
Yet it is hard to believe that Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) is not a success when passengers disgorge from a packed train of around 12 carriages at the Syokimau railway terminus in the capital, Nairobi - the last service of the day.
They have travelled non-stop from the port city of Mombasa, 470km (290 miles) away on the Indian Ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The Chinese plan to take over control of these countries.
.
“Railway to Nowhere”?
California has them beat with its high-speed rail to nowhere.
EXACTLY
Western countries have recently been trying to counter BRI, including US President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better World Initiative, launched in 2021 in collaboration with G7 economies. But there is general acknowledgement that China still can offer more in terms of long-term development.
For the Nairobi-Mombasa commuters, such investments for the country’s future are definitely worthwhile.
“Let us sacrifice to pay the debt and get more for such projects,” Ms Echesa told the BBC.
The Kenyan government will be hoping it can convince China, and its banks, that the SGR railway will be profitable if it gets to the border and beyond.
China’s competition
They leverage their land as part of the loan usually. If you have no money, your land is at least worth something.
...In the early 1960s, that African college students first came to China as part of a goodwill trip in which the government paid for the tuition of students from politically friendly areas. Though from developing countries, these students were also of the elite classes and given stipends far more than their Chinese classmates. Even so, they found themselves dissatisfied at the quality of life. The African students were much less worried about racism than they were focused on issues such as strained politics, low standard of living, and no social opportunities. Sautman notes, “the March 1962 beating of a Zanzibari by Beijing hotel attendants in a dispute over the sale of cigarettes led to sit-ins and hunger strikes by Africans, most of whom returned home.” Later on, some of the remaining African students went so far as to burn portraits of Mao in order to be deported...
Maybe they learned how not to build a railroad from Kalifornia.
Think Julius Nyere. Tanzania.
KENYA also gave us a “PRESIDENT” WHO TOOK US TO NOWHERE.
Africa wins again.
Yes they bait countries with loans they know they can’t repay.
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