Counting Chinese Businesses in Kenya, So Far

This year, more than 50 per cent of all the major building and construction projects have gone to Chinese companies. The catalogue of projects, worth billions of US dollars, which have so far been awarded to them, is long. It covers major highways and roads, airports and seaports, stadiums and university liberalities to provision of telephone services and oil prospecting.

Some of the contracts so far are:

1. Thika-Nairobi Super Highway
2. Kisumu Airport
3. Nairobi - southern by-pass
4. Nairobi - eastern by-pass
5. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport extensions
6. Gigiri Road project
7. Kenyatta university library
8. Moi International Sports Centre renovations
9. Nairobi-Western Kenya Oil Pipeline
10. Mtitu Andei-Voi Road project
11. Sondhu Miriu hydro project
12. Isiolo-Moyale Road
13. Wireless services to Telkom Kenya
14. Lamu Port - construction of a new port to serve countries such as Southern Sudan and Ethiopia
15. Oil Prospecting in Isiolo

As the projects have increased, so have Chinese companies which now number 200, rising from 44 in the year 2001. Among them are giant multinationals such as Huawei, Sinohydro Corporation and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

What’s Driving China into Africa

Faced with an increasing population and dwindling land, increasing unemployment and a rising life-styles, China has developed an insatiable need for Africa’s natural resources and rising job opportunities. And it has gone about getting these with unprecedented single-minded aggressiveness. In 2006, for example, China invited all African heads of State and Governments to a trade conference in Beijing to market its agenda at the top. Kenya was represented by President Mwai Kibaki who brought back with him Shs6 billion (about $86 million) worth of financial aid and a mellowed heart for the Chinese.

China has also no conditionality for its trade and aid to Africa. That means that corrupt regimes, dictators and human rights violators, who abound in Africa, can trade and get aid without “outsiders interfere with out internal politics,” as a Sudanese Minister for Energy and Mining, Awad Ahmed Jaz once put it.

Much of China-Africa trade involves Sudanese oil. Now the world’s second largest consumer of petroleum, China has been investing in oil infrastructure around Africa. Sudanese oil represents 10 per cent China’s total oil imports. In deed, its interest in the planned port at Lamu in Kenya is because it offers a cheaper access to the sea for its oil imports.

Civil Rights and the Chinese in Africa

Not everyone is however happy with the Chinese method of trade and investment. Ordinary Kenyans have complained about the poor quality of Chinese manufactured goods. And the amazing answer given by the Chinese embassy is that the poor quality goods were made to specifications of certain clients who apparently dumped them in Kenya.

Much more significant has been the criticism coming from Kenyan engineers and contractors who feel the Chinese will eventually replace them altogether. “The Chinese will stifle talent and skills and collapse the local engineering companies.”

Civil and human rights organizations are also concerned that Chinese disinterest in governance and human rights issues will lead to an increase in dictatorships in Africa.

The Kenya Government has however insisted that Kenyan engineers and contractors are benefiting from transfer of technology and from practical skills development. It is an argument viewed with suspicion given the well-known Chinese tendency to import everything, including cooks and laborers from China and to keep everything secret.

Government Efforts to Assist Kenyan Contractors

Most Kenyans however agree that Chinese contractors are efficient and professional in their work. Many Kenyan contractors are likely to use substandard material and workmanship if not completely abandon their projects incomplete.

It was in deed, these shortcomings that made the government abandon its efforts to assist them to get contracts. In 1970, the government bought out an international construction company and turned it to a parastatal, the National Construction Company, to assist the local contractors. But after a short spell of booming business, the corporation went into a coma from which it could not be awoken.

A report issued on its affairs said the contractors often failed to complete their projects in time. And second, hordes of conmen had infiltrated the corporation with bogus companies that started projects, abandoned them incomplete and fled with the loot.

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