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China-Africa relations
ChinaDiplomacy

China’s rail spending spree in Africa is over but it’s still laying down the tracks

  • Chinese contractors have started work on a mega rail project in Tanzania, days after completing another in Nigeria
  • Loan restructurings and poor returns have made lenders more cautious, putting other projects on hold

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Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan railway started operating earlier this month. Photo: Xinhua
Jevans Nyabiage

Just days after completing West Africa’s longest double-track standard railway in Nigeria, the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) has started work on a US$1.3 billion railway on the other side of the continent, in Tanzania.

CCECC and its project partner, China Railway Construction, will build the fifth phase of Tanzania’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), linking Mwanza – a port city on the shores of Lake Victoria – and the southern town of Isaka, 341km (212 miles) away.

In the past decade, Beijing has cemented its position as the largest contractor and financier of infrastructure in Africa, especially under the Belt and Road Initiative – President Xi Jinping’s trillion-dollar pet project that has seen the construction of railways, roads, ports and power plants.

Chinese companies have constructed railways across Africa, including one running from Mombasa on the Kenyan coast to Naivasha, a town in the Central Rift Valley, financed by the Export-Import (Exim) Bank of China at about US$4.7 billion.

The Addis Ababa-Djibouti electrified standard gauge railway, which cost US$3.4 billion, provided by China, was also built by Chinese firms, as well as the US$1.8 billion Benguela Railway from Lobito to Luau in Angola.

CCECC’s latest project – part of a larger 1,605km (997 miles) Tanzanian railway system from the port of Dar es Salaam to Mwanza – will create 11,000 jobs, according to President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who laid the foundation stone last week.

It will also “accelerate economic growth by transporting faster and faster cargo and people,” she said. The project is expected to be completed in May 2024 and will be self-financed.

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