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. Roughly 120 years ago, through many of the same landscapes that sleek blue trains now cross between Lagos and Ibadan, British colonial engineers laid tracks designed for the systematic extraction of Nigeria’s resources for the British Empire.
The irony is that Africa’s railway renaissance, including Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa–Djibouti line and Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, has been financed and built largely by China. Africa, which saw roughly 30,000 kilometers of rail laid under colonial rule, is once again watching foreign engineers remake its transport systems, this time under very different political and economic terms.
The uncomfortable question is, are 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 simple answer is that the railway was built to extract resources such as ivory, coffee, and minerals from the interior, and ship them to British ports. Serving African communities was never its primary purpose.
In 2017, China completed the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) connecting Mombasa to Nairobi at a cost of $3.2 billion. Roughly 90 percent of it was financed through Chinese loans. Like the colonial railway before it, the SGR follows much of the same transport corridor between the coast and Kenya's capital. But this time, the narrative is different because while the British saw a tool for dominion, Kenyan politicians presented the SGR as a symbol of national development and modernisation.
The pattern is difficult to ignore, as African nations then, as now, didn't control the capital, the technology, or the expertise. The railways were also designed by outsiders to serve strategic interests that extended beyond the continent. Additionally, African governments took on enormous debt to fund infrastructure they couldn't build themselves.
The difference is that colonial railways were built by force to extract wealth, and never intended to develop African economies. China's railways come with different rhetoric of partnership, mutual benefit, and South-South cooperation. The question is whether the rhetoric matches reality.
The Sovereignty Trap: Who Controls the Tracks?
150 years of African railway history teaches us that 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 a Pan-African triumph. It was a railway built to liberate and designed to give landlocked Zambia an alternative to apartheid-era South African ports. The Tan-Zam represented what African infrastructure could be. It was politically strategic, continentally integrated, and free from Western control.
But the Tan-Zam also exposed persistent problems. By the 1980s, the railway was plagued by maintenance failures and aging equipment, as well as operational mismanagement. Tanzania and Zambia lacked the technical capacity and resources to keep the trains running. Today, the Tan-Zam operates at a fraction of its capacity and has become a monument to good intentions without sustainable execution.
A similar 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. The extension stalled amid debt concerns, feasibility questions, and the realization that Kenya can barely afford to maintain the railway it has, let alone expand it.
Kenya doesn't fully control the railway it's paying for, as 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.
This isn't colonialism in the 19th-century sense. There are no governors-general or forced labor, and no Berlin Conference dividing Africa on a map. The structural dependency, however, is 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, to the Scramble for Africa itself, viewed here as an economic system as much as a political event.
Between 1880 and 1913, European powers built much of Africa's transport and communications infrastructure to integrate the continent into global markets as a supplier of raw materials. The infrastructure wasn't designed to connect African cities to each other. Connections between cities such as Lagos and Kano, or Nairobi and Kampala, received far less attention. Routes linking African territories to imperial centres such as Liverpool and Brussels were given priority.
When African nations gained independence in the 1960s, they inherited this infrastructure logic. Railways largely ran from mines to ports rather than linking major urban centres. Roads were built to support export agriculture, with far less emphasis on regional trade. The infrastructure itself reflected colonial priorities and remained oriented toward external markets.
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. Connections between African markets have received far less attention and remain limited in many parts of the continent.
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. They can either renegotiate from weakness or hand over control of strategic assets. In 2018, for example, 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
This raises an uncomfortable question. If African nations have been sovereign for more than sixty 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 and expertise?
The easy answer is capital. African nations lack the financial resources, but that is only part of the story.
The harder answer is capacity. Decades of underinvestment in technical education and corruption have gutted Africa's engineering base. When Tanzania wants to repair the Tan-Zam Railway, for example, it often relies on expertise from outside the region.
The hardest answer is that structural dependency was the point. Colonial powers deliberately underdeveloped African technical capacity. They built railways and established mines without making comparable investments in African technical training or the transfer of specialised knowledge. Independence transferred political power, but economic and technological disparities remained. Sixty years later, the gap is still visible.
Although China didn't create this dependency, it is leveraging it, much as Europe, the World Bank, and IMF did during the structural adjustment era. It is 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. What matters is the terms on which they are built.
There's a reason Rwanda is investing heavily in technical education and mandating technology transfer clauses in infrastructure contracts. There's also 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 that infrastructure is only liberating if you control it. The Tan-Zam Railway was supposed to free Zambia from dependence on apartheid South Africa, yet it created dependence on Chinese spare parts and expertise. Kenya's SGR was expected to transform East African trade, but it has instead become a debt burden managed by a Chinese operator.
However, a counter-narrative is emerging as 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.
The railway remains a useful lens through which to view Africa's position in the global economy. The tracks are being laid and the trains are running. What matters is whether African nations gain greater control over the infrastructure they are financing and building.
