In this second part of the series on the assessment of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto administration, writer Dominic Omondi looks in to Kenya’s debt burden, and how the amount of loans grew after the dalliance with China started.
In April 2019, a year after President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga made a truce with the famous handshake, the two travelled to Beijing, China and there were great expectations.
They were not as enthusiastic when they made return trip. Although the Kenyan delegation had left with pomp and even secured a number of deals in China, they sneaked back into the country a few days later a crestfallen lot.
They had missed out of on the main prize. They did not see this coming.
It was during the tenure of retired President Mwai Kibaki that the Chinese dragon landed in Kenya, puffing a flame of billions of shillings which fired up a group of mega infrastructural projects starting with the Thika Super Highway.
But the Chinese billions also come with a fair share of problems, especially during President Kenyatta’s first term when even more loans flowed in from Beijing.
Suddenly, Kenya was grappling with a heavy debt burden, a deluge of cheap imports that enfeebled local manufacturing firms, corruption and, in some instances, cases of discrimination that whipped up xenophobic feelings against the Chinese.
Finally, Beijing realised that there was another side to the billions it had disbursed to Kenya, and Africa generally with Ethiopia at some point teetering on the verge of default.
There had been reports that when the Kenyan delegation left for the Infrastructure Summit in Beijing , they were to sign a Sh368 billion financing for the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Naivasha to Kisumu.
But the Chinese government refused to loosen the purse strings, pointing to a major shift in relations between Beijing and Nairobi.
It was the Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia who, in a press conference in Beijing, gave the clearest hint that suddenly it was not business as usual for China.“All documents are ready,” Macharia told reporters about the contract, adding that after engaging the Chinese Government, it was agreed that a feasibility study of the SGR be done first.“Not just for the Naivasha to Kisumu but also all the way from Mombasa to Kisumu so that we can establish its commercial viability,” said Macharia.Of all President Kenyatta’s flagship projects, it is […]
