China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is accorded numerous bad reputations from being a ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ to ‘neocolonialist aid policy.’ The BRI, according to China, is a project that focuses on infrastructure development and investment. It especially targets the building of land and maritime networks that would link China with the rest of the world.
Although on paper, it is claimed that the policy should reduce impediments to trade and stimulate economic development, a long-term evaluation of its impact on beneficiary countries—especially African beneficiaries—points to the opposite.
Loans from China to African governments and state-owned enterprises between 2000 and 2017 alone exceeded $143 billion. This figure is high considering Chinese loans are easy money, which doesn’t come with stringent conditions as those provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund….
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