While reviewing the economic situation of African nations one cannot but ponder over the economic crisis currently underway in these countries. Most of Africa seems indebted to one country: China. There seems to be a well crafted plan woven to trap every African nation that wants its infrastructure to be developed or tread the path to progress. At times, political parties largely entrenched in corruption, hope this ‘development’ would give them the leverage to engage with their citizens from a position of advantage. But the African public slowly seems to be awakening to the reality they are surrounded by. With strategic geographical locations, nations in Africa, especially those with ports have begun to realize that China has been taking them on board with clauses that impact their sovereignty, that have the potential to deprive them of access to their own ports, that their infrastructure has been developed through exploitation of abundant natural resources for decades, so on and so forth. Kenya is no exception to this Chinese policy of dept trap.
The situation is so grim that currently, Kenya is in dire need to repay more than US$ 6.4 billion worth outstanding loans to China. These loans have mostly been provided by the China Exim
Bank. As in the case of the island nation of Sri Lanka, it is predicted that the Kenyan government too would face an impending crisis regarding paying back the loans and eventually start surrendering/handing-over key infrastructures built from the very money taken from Chinese banks to pay the Chinese builders who constructed these projects in the first place. This cycle of debt doesn’t end here with taking over projects. In exchange for relaxations in loan repayment China has extorted upcoming projects from Kenyan authorities. Such activities help sustain the debt trap while China symbolically grants monetary waivers or permits a delayed time period to
repay the loan.
Of late, Kenya has also been systemically ignoring petitions filed by its activists and law society groups, to protest the China Road and Bridge Corporation’s (CRBC) bid to gain an infrastructure project by flouting the legal procurement procedures. CRBC had earlier acquired the Standard Gauge Railway project worth nearly US$ 4.7 billion. Even in the case of Huawei, while an alarm was raised by American telecom experts about the company’s dubious espionage activities and association with the Chinese political and military leadership, Kenya learnt no lesson and its largest telecom operator, Safaricom, has deployed the Huawei-powered fifth-generation (5G) mobile network across the country. Ironical for a nation which without being fully conversant with 2G and 3G is directly jumping to the 5G network. The pattern is discernible as the 5G network with all its technological advancements would result in giving away national secrets to China’s blue-eyed telecom spying network, Huawei.
In another significant development, the Kenyan Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas has apparently demanded transparency to unearth the terms and conditions that led to a deal between the Kenyan authorities and a Chinese Petro-chemical Company, ChemChina in 2019. In the aftermath of the agreement between the two parties, the Chinese firm won the bid to buy oil without revealing the addition to the coffers of the company or the net revenue the company would earn from the sale of Kenyan crude oil. After winning the bid, as was expected, China imported crude oil shipments from Kenya.
Not just in terms of exploitation of natural resources, China has also been a blatant violator of human rights, particularly of minorities and those with different ethnicities. Kenyans witnessed this first hand when in 2018; some Chinese officials in a Chinese motor cycle company abused Kenyan workers and called them ‘Monkeys’. Though, Kenyans in general are aware that the Chinese tend to have racist and xenophobic attitudes, they could barely represent their concerns or put up a fight for their rights & instead surrendered to the Chinese might owing to various economic and geopolitical factors. However, such issues dealing with identities and a nation’s sense of pride and dignity cannot be kept under wraps for long and the Kenyans today are increasingly concerned about acts of racism and discrimination in their own nation at the expense of the Chinese.
Apart from verbal remarks and derogatory references, the racist discriminatory attitudes of the Chinese are visible even in their basic human interactions, however negligible. The factories constructed by Chinese enterprises, have separate toilets for Chinese officials/labour force; whereas Kenyan workers use different toilets, a clear mark of differentiation by race. Moreover, if a Kenyan employee comes to work fifteen minutes late, he/she may lose 6 to 7 hours salary for that day whereas the economic parameters that govern the Chinese are notably different.
Added to the racial discrimination, it suffices to say that there is barely any social interaction between the Chinese and Kenyans. The Chinese, obviously looking down upon the Kenyans do not consider them worthy of equal engagement. Ironically though, there is a significant Chinese population in Kenya of approximately more than 40,000 individuals. The Chinese stay in Nairobi in large residential areas, often secluded and into themselves, remaining in the company of other. Chinese and take separate transport facilities for commuting, which invariably leaves very little room for social interaction.
Given the scope of people to people engagement or the lack of it rather, it can be concluded that the Chinese seem to be operating in Kenya with a clear racial bias. There seems to be an apparent disdain for the local populace and their ways of being, which is despicable for a country that is contingent on the resources of another nation for its own ‘development’. A cursory glance at the projects being handled by the Chinese reflects their focus on facilitating the debt trap, exploiting precious resources and usurping infrastructures of strategic relevance. The entire process of taking and repaying debt is a cleverly designed self sustaining exercise that spirals into a mammoth problem that countries can barely see. When they eventually do, it is too late. Hope Kenya is able to wriggle out of this quagmire well in time.
