Kenya will this Thursday restart a multi-billion-dollar railway extension that was financed ‌through revenue securitisation, reviving a project that has been stalled for over six years after initial lending from Beijing dried up.

The railway’s first section, linking the port of Mombasa to Nairobi, was completed in 2017. But after China slashed funding for large African infrastructure projects under its Belt ​and Road Initiative, the project stalled near the Rift Valley town of Naivasha, more than 350 kilometer short ​of reaching the Ugandan border and delaying a planned cross-border link to boost regional connectivity and ⁠commerce.

Critics have said the stalled project had become a symbol of China’s debt trap diplomacy, with Beijing extending large, often ​opaque loans to a poorer country for infrastructure projects – though that is a claim rejected by the Chinese government.

Last year, Kenya ​and China renegotiated terms of the loans used to construct the first two phases to cut annual repayments for Nairobi.

–Reuters–