The Tsavo Railway Line Bridge on Kenya’s Chinese-financed Standard Gauge Railway Line, circa May 2020. Chinese infrastructure investment is still tilting Kenya away from the West, according to Wesley Hill. (Shutterstock/Anthony Trivet Photography)

‘Bridges, Not Lectures,’ Is Still the Best Way to Beat China in Kenya

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China’s investment in the East African nation has slowed, but it still remains the dominant investor. 

US-China competition has been escalating globally over the last 15 years and is likely to intensify as the race for rare earths and prime geopolitical real estate continues. Chinese influence in Africa has waxed and waned. During the 2020s, the continent’s enthusiasm for Beijing generally cooled. Yet, American policymakers seem unable to make considerable gains despite this tidal shift. 

Afrobarometer found that in 2014–15, 63 percent of Africans viewed China’s influence very positively, and a slim plurality viewed the Chinese model of economic development as superior to the West. A decade later, 23 percent of Africans believe the Chinese model of development is superior. However, this isn’t a shift toward outright hostility, but toward qualified skepticism. The China-Africa honeymoon is over.

This declining enthusiasm matters. It undermines Beijing’s claims that its developmental model is inherently different or superior. Africans increasingly seem interested in what China can provide rather than what China represents. This is vital because geopolitical influence does not disappear simply because public admiration declines. 

However, the end of a honeymoon does not mean divorce is inevitable or even foreseeable. Chinese influence is changing. Beijing is lending less money for enormous infrastructure projects while Chinese companies remain active as contractors, investors, traders, manufacturers, and operators. The emphasis is shifting from sovereign financing toward routine commercial relationships. China’s economic presence can therefore remain substantial even as its public appeal weakens. 

Kenya provides an unusually useful case for understanding this transition. If you were betting money on an outpost of Chinese influence in the 2020s decades ago, you probably wouldn’t have picked Kenya. During the Cold War, Kenya was a Western partner in East Africa. Its neighbors pursued socialist experiments of varying intensity. Ethiopia embraced Marxism-Leninism under the Derg while its Somali rival also courted Soviet support. To Kenya’s south, Tanzania partially emulated high-Maoism by pursuing Ujamaa. Kenya followed a different path, maintaining a broadly pro-Western orientation and developing a capitalist economy. 

Nothing in Kenya’s history made Chinese influence inevitable or predictable, unlike in other African cases such as Angola, Tanzania, or Zimbabwe. That makes its subsequent relationship with Beijing especially revealing. Kenya did not inherit a political structure that compelled engagement with China. Its leaders entered the relationship largely clear-eyed, motivated by economic interests rather than ideological affinity.  

Economic penetration began during the........

© The National Interest