China Just Gave Kenya Two Luxury Buses and a New Foreign Ministry HQ

Kenya’s new Foreign Ministry building will be built and paid for by the Chinese government. Ambassador Zhou Pingjian made the announcement late last week during a visit with Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau at the current foreign ministry headquarters in Nairobi.

The new building will take approximately three to four years to build at a cost of $38 million (Sh40 billion). Neither Ambassador Zhou nor PS Macharia provided any details as to when construction is expected to begin.

The Chinese envoy said the donation is intended in part to thank Kenya for its support 50 years ago when China rejoined the United Nations. The foreign minister was equally effusive: “We, in this ministry, have special gratitude to the government of the People’s Republic of China for the generous grant towards the construction of a new ministry headquarters,” he told the ambassador during a press event.

Ambassador Zhou also donated a pair of luxury buses to the Kenyan foreign ministry. They will be used to shuttle VIPs during international conferences and other events in Nairobi.

Kenya is just the latest African beneficiary of China’s so-called “Building Diplomacy,” where Beijing underwrites the construction of ministries and other government buildings across the continent, most notably the African Union headquarters, and the new Africa Centers for Disease Control building.

While there have long been concerns in the U.S. and Europe that China leverages the buildings it donates to African governments as a vector for espionage, none of those concerns were evident in the subsequent news coverage of Ambassador Zhou’s announcement of the donation on Thursday.

In fact, not a single Kenyan publication mentioned spying in its reporting on the issue.

Kenya Isn’t The Only African Country Getting a New Foreign Ministry Building From the Chinese

  • GHANA:  In April, China and Ghana signed an agreement for Beijing to finance and build a new annex building for the Ghanaian Foreign Ministry that will house the Foreign Minister’s office. (GHANA NEWS AGENCY)
  • TUNISIA: Construction of a new 12,000 square meter diplomatic training academy is now underway in Tunis. It is intended to educate diplomats from Tunisia and other African countries. The building is expected to be completed later this year. (XINHUA)

China Has Constructed at Least 186 Government Buildings Across Africa

China’s donation of a new foreign ministry headquarters to the Kenyan government is just the latest in a decades-long campaign to provide African governments with buildings.

Joshua Meservey, a senior policy analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, closely tracks Chinese building donations to African and Middle Eastern governments. Last May, Meservey published a detailed report on the issue where he made the case that Beijing uses these buildings as “a vector for spying” on both local governments and others including the United States.

The report provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of China’s “Building Diplomacy” drive on Africa. Since 1966, Chinese companies have constructed or renovated (or both) at least 186 such buildings: 

“At least 40 of Africa’s 54 countries have a government building constructed by a Chinese company. Given the difficulty of gathering comprehensive data on independent China’s nearly seven decades of engagement with Africa, these numbers are almost certainly an undercount.”

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The post China Just Gave Kenya Two Luxury Buses and a New Foreign Ministry HQ appeared first on The China Africa Project.



source https://chinaafricaproject.com/2021/05/17/china-just-gave-kenya-two-luxury-buses-and-a-new-foreign-ministry-hq/

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