India appears set to challenge Chinese dominance in Africa

President Uhuru Kenyatta with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at State House in Nairobi during the premier’s recent visit. PHOTO | FILE 

By GEORGE WACHIRA

Over the past 10 years China has made a major impact on Africa as it sought to grow its investments to support Chinese industries that targeted dominance of the global export markets.

In recent weeks we also saw India Prime Minister Narendra Modi come out to Africa intending to similarly strengthen the sub-continent’s share of investment and export opportunities in Africa.

Having closely observed the Chinese entry and consolidation in Africa it will be interesting to see how India plans to expand its presence in the continent.

When the Chinese initially came to Africa mainly looking for raw materials and fossil energy to feed its busy factories, they found a continent in a serious infrastructure deficit and with limited funding capacity.

This became an opportunity for a trade-off as the Chinese undertook to provide long term infrastructure credit financing in exchange for preferential concessions for extractive resources.

But Beijing put caveats that infrastructure projects funded with its credit was to be done by Chinese firms. And this became a template for future Sino-Africa business and investment relations.

Specifically for Kenya, many infrastructure projects funded with long term Chinese credit are either completed, in progress or on the drawing board.

Along the way, the Chinese construction companies have acquired a status of preferred contractors of choice due to their good record of low costs, quality work, and timely project execution.

Today, Chinese firms dominate both the public and private sector construction sectors in Kenya. In the meantime, Kenya has opened its gates wide open to receive massive Chinese imports. Further, Chinese citizens are to be found in local wholesale and retail businesses.

The Chinese have also established themselves in real estate development. Whether by plan or default the Chinese have become a fixture in our gross domestic product.

All along except probably for one small hospital in the east of Nairobi, the Chinese have been missing in action when it comes to development aid and charities, preferring to leave this area to western countries and Japan.

If one cared to calculate the sum total of all direct benefits accruing to China from Kenya — financing interest, construction profits, Chinese jobs and imports — it will certainly show that China has continued to massively benefit from Kenya.

Let us now look at India and its perceived designs for Kenya. Going purely by the agreements signed by India and Kenya last week, the relationship between the two countries appears to be defined by “partnerships”.

Whether it is the cancer centre or the textile factory in Eldoret it is all modelled on partnerships where the two nations mutually benefit. And this is the way it should be.

India is certainly looking for an expanded export market for the ‘Make in India’ campaign launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi a couple of years ago.