In June 2021, Nigeria’s then-President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the Lagos-Ibadan railway line, a $1.5 billion project built by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation. Sleek blue trains now glide through landscapes where, roughly 120 years ago, British colonial engineers laid the original tracks for a very different purpose: the systematic extraction of Nigeria’s resources for the British Empire.
The irony is hard to miss for anyone paying attention. Africa’s railway renaissance—from Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa–Djibouti line to Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway—has been financed and built largely by China. A continent that saw roughly 30,000 kilometers of rail laid under colonial rule is once again watching foreign engineers remake its transport arteries, this time under very different political and economic terms.
But here's the uncomfortable question: Are we watching infrastructure development, or are we watching history repeat itself?
The Railway Playbook: Then and Now
When the British built the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria between 1896 and 1901, they called it the "Lunatic Express." Critics in London questioned why British taxpayers should fund a railway "from nowhere to nowhere." The answer was simple: the railway didn't exist to serve Africans. It existed to extract resources from the interior—ivory, coffee, minerals—and ship them to British ports.
Fast forward to 2017. China completes the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) connecting Mombasa to Nairobi at a cost of $3.2 billion—90 percent of which was financed by Chinese loans. Like the colonial railway before it, the SGR carves almost the exact same path through the Kenyan landscape. But this time, the narrative has shifted: where the British saw a tool for dominion, Kenyan politicians tout the sleek new tracks as a shimmering symbol of progress and African agency.
The pattern is striking. Then, as now, African nations didn't control the capital, the technology, or the expertise. Then, as now, the railways were designed by outsiders to serve strategic interests that extended beyond the continent. Then, as now, African governments took on enormous debt to fund infrastructure they couldn't build themselves.
The difference—and this is where the story gets complicated—is that colonial railways were explicitly extractive, built by force, and never intended to develop African economies. China's railways come with different rhetoric: partnership, mutual benefit, South-South cooperation. The question is whether the rhetoric matches reality.
The Sovereignty Trap: Who Controls the Tracks?
Here's what 150 years of African railway history teaches us: infrastructure without sovereignty is infrastructure without power.
When Zambia and Tanzania built the Tan-Zam Railway in the 1970s with Chinese assistance, it was celebrated as Pan-African triumph—a railway built to liberate, not extract. Designed to give landlocked Zambia an alternative to apartheid-era South African ports, the Tan-Zam represented what African infrastructure could be: politically strategic, continentally integrated, and free from Western control.
But the Tan-Zam also revealed a harsh truth. By the 1980s, the railway was plagued by maintenance failures, aging equipment, and operational mismanagement. Tanzania and Zambia lacked the technical capacity, spare parts, and capital to keep the trains running. Today, the Tan-Zam operates at a fraction of its capacity. The liberation railway became a monument to good intentions without sustainable execution.
The same pattern is emerging with China's Belt and Road railways. Kenya's SGR was supposed to extend to Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan—recreating the colonial-era dream of trans-African rail connectivity. But the extension stalled. Why? Debt concerns, feasibility questions, and the realization that Kenya can barely afford to maintain the railway it has, let alone expand it.
And here's the kicker: Kenya doesn't fully control the railway it's paying for. The operating contract was awarded to a Chinese firm. Kenyan engineers weren't trained to maintain the specialized Chinese equipment. When disputes arise over cost overruns or loan terms, Kenya negotiates from a position of dependence, not strength.
This isn't colonialism in the 19th-century sense. There are no governors-general, no forced labor, no Berlin Conference dividing Africa on a map. But the structural dependency? That's eerily familiar.
The Pattern Behind the Tracks
To understand why African infrastructure keeps following the same script, you have to go back further than colonialism. You have to go back to the Scramble for Africa itself—not just as a political event, but as an economic system.
Between 1880 and 1913, European powers built Africa's railways, ports, and telegraph lines not to develop Africa, but to integrate it into global markets as a supplier of raw materials. The infrastructure wasn't designed to connect African cities to each other. Lagos to Kano? Minimal connectivity. Nairobi to Kampala? An afterthought. But Lagos to Liverpool? Kinshasa to Brussels? Those routes were pristine.
When African nations gained independence in the 1960s, they inherited this infrastructure logic. Railways ran from mines to ports, not between capitals. Roads served export agriculture, not regional trade. The infrastructure itself was colonial in its design—oriented outward, not inward.
Sixty years later, the Belt and Road Initiative follows the same orientation. Ethiopia's railway connects Addis Ababa to the port of Djibouti—perfect for exporting Ethiopian goods to Chinese markets. Kenya's SGR connects Mombasa's port to the interior—ideal for importing Chinese manufactured goods. The intra-African connectivity? Still theoretical.
And the debt? Between 2000 and 2020, African governments borrowed over $170 billion from China, much of it for infrastructure. When countries like Zambia and Kenya struggle to repay, they face the same choice their grandparents did: renegotiate from weakness, or hand over control of strategic assets. In 2018, there were fears China might seize Kenya's Mombasa port as collateral for unpaid SGR loans—a 21st-century version of gunboat diplomacy, minus the gunboats.
The Question No One Wants to Ask
So here's where we get uncomfortable. If African nations have been sovereign for 60+ years, why are they still dependent on external powers to build basic infrastructure? Why can't Nigeria build its own railways? Why can't Kenya manufacture its own trains? Why does every major infrastructure project require Chinese loans, Chinese construction firms, and Chinese engineers?
The easy answer is capital. African nations lack the financial resources. But that's only part of the story.
The harder answer is capacity. Decades of underinvestment in technical education, brain drain to Western economies, and corruption have gutted Africa's engineering base. When Tanzania wants to repair the Tan-Zam Railway, it can't find enough qualified railway engineers in East Africa. They have to import expertise.
And the hardest answer? Structural dependency was the point. Colonial powers deliberately underdeveloped African technical capacity. They built railways but didn't train African engineers. They established mines but didn't transfer metallurgical knowledge. Independence transferred political power but not economic or technological power. And sixty years later, the gap remains.
China didn't create this dependency. But China is leveraging it—just as Europe did, just as the World Bank and IMF did during the structural adjustment era, just as every external power does when Africa needs something it can't build itself.
Where Does the Train Go From Here?
This isn't an argument against Chinese investment or infrastructure development. Africa desperately needs railways, ports, and roads. The question is: on what terms?
There's a reason Rwanda is investing heavily in technical education and mandating technology transfer clauses in infrastructure contracts. There's a reason Ghana is pushing for local content requirements in Chinese-funded projects. African nations are starting to recognize that infrastructure without knowledge transfer is just expensive dependence with better PR.
The historical lesson is clear: infrastructure is only liberating if you control it. The Tan-Zam Railway was supposed to free Zambia from dependence on apartheid South Africa. Instead, it created dependence on Chinese spare parts and expertise. Kenya's SGR was supposed to transform East African trade. Instead, it's become a debt albatross managed by a Chinese operator.
But there's a counter-narrative emerging. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) isn't waiting for China to connect African markets. African tech hubs are building digital infrastructure that doesn't require foreign loans. And a new generation of African engineers, trained in China and returning home, are demanding knowledge transfer, not just turnkey projects.
The railway is a perfect metaphor for Africa's position in the global economy: the tracks are being laid, the trains are running, but the question remains—who's driving?
And if the answer is still "someone else," then maybe we need to ask harder questions about what sovereignty actually means in the 21st century.
