China-built dams now anchor East Africa’s grids, yet cheap megawatts alone have not delivered the factories and jobs the projects were sold to underwrite.
Section
Economics
Floating the Shortfall: Bui Adds Solar to Steady a River-Bound Grid
Bui’s hydropower output swings with the Black Volta. Ghana’s answer is to float solar on the same reservoir – turning one dam into a planning platform.
Transport as integration: China’s footprint and the regional-knitting test
Beijing frames its railways and ports as a contribution to African integration. The continent’s own plans, PIDA and Agenda 2063, are the yardstick.
Corridors over showpieces: why the link between projects matters most
A single railway is a ribbon-cutting. A working corridor is an economy. The gap between the two is where most African trade still loses money.
Ports as gateways: where China’s African infrastructure meets the trade test
Beijing’s white paper counts almost 100 ports built across Africa. Whether those quays move African goods, or mostly imports, is the harder question.
TAZARA’s Real Cargo: Copper to the Sea Through Dar es Salaam
Rehabilitating TAZARA is sold as a rail story. Its point is the sea – a mineral corridor delivering Zambian copper to Dar es Salaam, racing US- and Japan-backed routes for the same ore.
Kano-Maradi: A Rail Line Built to Loosen a Landlocked Country’s Knot
The Kano-Maradi railway is sold as regional integration – landlocked Niger reaching Nigerian ports. But its lead builder is Portuguese, its earthworks Chinese, and its bill near US$2bn.
Nigeria’s Coastal Rail: A 1,400km Promise Against a Decade of Delay
Nigeria frames a Lagos-to-Calabar coastal railway as the spine of corridor industrialisation. Yet the line has been launched, stalled and relaunched since 2014, its funding switching hands more than
Abuja-Kaduna Rail: The Safe Corridor a Single Attack Reframed
Nigeria’s first modern intercity railway became prized as the safe way to travel a kidnap-prone road. In 2022 an attack on a train tested that promise.