When he pledged to step up efforts to promote private sector investments in Africa, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was jockeying for a stronger position on the continent that is becoming way too reliant on China.
Last September at a conference with African leaders, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $60bn in financing for Africa and wrote off some debt for the continent’s poorer nations. China’s trade with Africa totalled $200bn in 2018, more than 12 times the value of trade between the continent and Japan.
Several African countries form part of Jinping’s “Belt and Road” initiative, which aims to build an infrastructure network connecting China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Critics of China’s infrastructure funding have warned that Djibouti in the Horn of Africa could be next to sacrifice its sovereignty to cope with an unaffordable debt burden. Nearly 80% of the tiny east African nation’s debt is held by China.
In Kenya, newspapers printed portions of loan agreement between Kenya and China that the African country had put up its largest port Mombasa as collateral for $3.2bn in funding to build a railway line. Kenya says there’s no such thing but won’t disclose the terms of the deal.