Africa Starts to Have Second Thoughts About That Chinese Money
The Tazara railway runs from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was China’s first foreign aid project.
Photographer: Robert Harding/AlamyDipak Patel can still recall the dizzying grandeur of his 2003 visit to Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People: the rows of stern guards all the same height, the state dinner that included stewed shark fin and bird’s nest soup, and the People’s Liberation Army band playing songs from Patel’s native Zambia—even singing in one of the African country’s scores of dialects.
As Zambia’s minister of commerce at the time, Patel had joined the delegation to cement ties and—crucially—secure financing for big-ticket infrastructure initiatives. While most delegates were eager to accept anything they could get for projects such as a hydropower dam and a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, Patel urged caution. “My view was that we needed to build a strategic partnership and think it through,” he says. “But I was one voice in the cabinet.”