tirsdag 21. mai 2019

A legacy of lunacy haunts Kenya's old railway. Will China's $3.6B line be different?

In 1903, British colonial administrator Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot made a bold statement: "It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country." The country was Kenya. The railway became known as the Lunatic Express. Now 116 years later, another railway line has been built almost parallel to those same tracks in a bid to transform this part of Africa, but this time by a different world power: China. Whether this railway will earn as colorful a moniker as that of the British endeavor remains to be seen.