Is Kenya’s popular Chinese-built railway a massive white elephant?

[John Ashworth]

Is Kenya’s popular Chinese-built railway a massive white elephant?

carrying passengers is not the main reason why the new railway line was built.

In 2014, when Kenya took a largely commercial $3.2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, the goal was to transport freight between Mombasa and Nairobi more efficiently by train.

When measured against this original purpose, the freight service, in fact, has been a big disappointment. Since it launched in early 2018, it has consistently failed to deliver enough goods to enable the Mombasa port to pay for itself...