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[CNJRoss]

NPR 'All Things Considered,' 10/8/18:

 

A New Chinese-Funded Railway In Kenya Sparks Debt-Trap Fears

 

 

Red neon announces the "Nairobi Terminus" at the Chinese-financed Standard Gauge Railway station in Kenya's capital.

 

 

The Standard Gauge Railway station in Nairobi is easily the most impressive public building in Kenya.

 

While a lot of Kenyan government buildings are drab and functional and date back to colonial days, this station is adventurous. It's all gray and modern. Geometric shapes form an abstract locomotive, and red neon announces the "Nairobi Terminus."

 

The train runs 293 miles from Kenya's capital city to the port of Mombasa and back twice a day and represents the biggest infrastructure project since Kenya's independence 54 years ago. The Chinese financed it; a Chinese company built it; and the Chinese will operate it for many years to come.

 

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[CNJRoss]

Bloomberg, 7/18/19

China’s Built a Railroad to Nowhere in Kenya

 

Beijing is withholding the $4.9 billion needed to finish the project, once a flagship for Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.

 

 

Gleaming concrete sleepers run across a new railway bridge in Kenya, the latest stretch of a Chinese-built line from the coast all the way to Uganda.

 

Only, it doesn’t quite reach the border. Instead, the railroad ends abruptly by a sleepy village about 75 miles west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the tracks laid but unused.

 

Construction of what was intended to be a flagship infrastructure project for Eastern Africa was halted earlier this year after China withheld some $4.9 billion in funding needed to allow the line’s completion. Beijing’s sudden financial reticence appeared to catch the governments of Kenya and Uganda off guard: Both may now be forced to reinstate a colonial-era line in a bid to patch the link and boost regional trade.

 

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