What’s the price of Chinese generosity?
It has been an extremely busy period of international engagements for Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. A week ago, he was in the United States for his first face-to-face engagement with President Donald Trump. A few days later, he hosted British Prime Minister Theresa May in Nairobi. Now, he is in Beijing for the China-Africa Forum for Co-operation Summit.
China has emerged as the most enterprising and dominant foreign power. Beijing has achieved this through meticulous and calculated deals with many African nations based purely on business and devoid of conditions such as the enforcement of human rights, transparency and fidelity to the rule of law. It has been generous in giving huge and attractive infrastructure loans. However, the reality has since set in.
Kenya is reeling under the burden of foreign debt, the bulk of it arising from the megainfrastructure projects by China. Many countries are beginning to ask themselves if the huge loans are worth it and sustainable in the long run. Time has come for African leaders to critically interrogate their relationship with China.
They should use the summit to ask tough questions. What are the benefits in this relationship? Is China unfairly exploiting Africa like the others before it? We have to trade with the East just as we have with the West. But all these engagements must be in the interest of our nations.