Kenyan law professor PLO Lumumba was refused entry to Zambia due to
"security considerations", authorities said. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Kenyan law professor and former director of
the anti-corruption commission PLO Lumumba was on Saturday refused entry
to Zambia due to "security considerations", authorities said.
Patrick
Loch Otieno Lumumba, director of the Kenya School of Laws, had been due
to deliver a talk on Chinese influence in Africa on Sunday at Eden
University.
On arrival at Kenneth Kaunda International airport in Lusaka, however, he was refused entry before being deported back to Kenya.
"(The)
government through (the) immigration department has denied entry into
Zambia of Prof Patrick Lumumba, a Kenyan national, due to security
considerations," Information and Broadcasting Minister Dora Siliya said
in a tweet.
“Immigration is a security wing working with agencies within and beyond Zambia,” the minister said.
Prof
Lumumba's planned talk entitled "Africa in the age of China influence
and global geo dynamics" followed growing anger at Beijing's grip on the
economy of the southern African nation.
China is the main investor in Zambia as it is in several other
African countries and with its offers of "unconditional" aid, most
public tenders are awarded to Chinese bidders.
In
Lusaka and across the country, China is busy constructing airports,
roads, factories and police stations with the building boom largely
funded by Chinese loans.
Zambian public debt is
officially around $10.6 billion but suspicions have grown in recent
months that the government is hiding its indebtedness -- as happened in
neighbouring Mozambique, which in 2016 was forced to admit it had kept
secret $2 billion of borrowing.
Fearing that Zambia
might be in a similar position, the International Monetary Fund at one
point delayed talks over a $1.3 billion loan deal.
Finance
Minister Margaret Mwanakatwe has insisted that in the first half of
2018 $342 million was paid in interest to creditors, of which 53 per
cent were commercial sector -- and only 30 per cent of which were
Chinese.
But the country's main opposition party has
put China's debt dominance at the forefront of its campaign to unseat
the government.
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