Across the African continent, railway tracks stretch through mountains, deserts, crowded cities, agricultural regions and vast open landscapes, carrying passengers and freight between places that were once separated by journeys lasting many hours or even days. Some of these lines are more than a century old, built during the colonial period to move minerals and agricultural products from the interior toward ports on the coast, while others belong to a much newer chapter in African history, one in which China has become one of the most important builders and financiers of transport infrastructure on the continent. Over the past several decades Chinese engineers, construction companies, banks and railway specialists have participated in projects from Tanzania and Zambia to Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Nigeria and Angola, creating thousands of kilometres of new or reconstructed railway. Their presence has become part of a much larger transformation taking place across Africa as governments attempt to overcome one of the continent’s greatest economic obstacles, the difficulty and cost of moving people and goods across enormous distances. For countries seeking industrial growth, expanding cities and stronger regional trade, railways offer something that roads alone cannot easily provide. A single freight train can carry the equivalent of many trucks, potentially reducing congestion and the wear placed on national highways, while passenger trains can link major cities in a way that is safer and more predictable than long road journeys. Yet railway construction is extraordinarily expensive, and governments often struggle to find investors willing to finance projects whose economic returns may take decades to appear. This is where China found an opportunity to become deeply involved. Chinese banks were prepared to provide large loans, Chinese state owned construction companies possessed the engineering capacity to build complicated infrastructure quickly, and African governments were eager to obtain the railways, ports, roads and power systems that they believed could support economic development. The result was a partnership that became one of the most visible features of China’s growing relationship with Africa. It was never simply a story of one country arriving and building whatever it wanted. African governments requested projects, negotiated contracts, selected routes and decided which infrastructure should receive national priority, while Chinese companies competed for contracts and Chinese banks considered which schemes they were willing to finance. The relationship was therefore built from overlapping interests. African governments wanted infrastructure and China wanted commercial opportunities, political relationships and a larger role in international development. Sometimes these interests produced impressive engineering achievements and important improvements in transport, while at other times the financial and operational problems surrounding the projects became almost as significant as the railways themselves. To understand what Chinese built railways have meant for Africa, it is necessary to look beyond the trains and stations and consider the much larger questions surrounding them. Who benefits from a railway once construction is finished, how much traffic does it actually carry, how easily can a government repay the money borrowed to build it, who maintains the equipment twenty years later and what happens when a railway designed as part of a regional network ends before reaching the border it was originally meant to cross.

The story begins long before the modern era of Chinese overseas investment, with one of the most remarkable infrastructure projects undertaken in Africa during the twentieth century. In the years following African independence, Zambia faced a serious strategic problem. The country possessed enormous copper resources, but as a landlocked nation it depended heavily on transport routes running through southern Africa, including territories controlled at the time by white minority governments. Zambia and neighbouring Tanzania wanted an alternative route connecting the copper producing interior to the Indian Ocean through the port of Dar es Salaam, allowing Zambia to trade without relying so heavily on southern routes. Several Western governments and international financial institutions were approached, but doubts about the economic viability of such a long and difficult railway discouraged them from supporting the project. China, however, agreed. What followed was the construction of the Tanzania Zambia Railway, usually called TAZARA, a line of roughly 1,860 kilometres crossing some of the most challenging terrain in eastern and southern Africa. Beginning in 1970, tens of thousands of African workers laboured alongside Chinese engineers and technicians, cutting through mountains, crossing rivers and constructing hundreds of bridges as the railway pushed inland from Tanzania toward Zambia. The work required an extraordinary logistical effort, especially at a time when China itself was far poorer than it would become in later decades. By the middle of the 1970s the railway was substantially complete, creating a direct rail connection between Zambia and the Tanzanian coast. For Tanzania and Zambia, the project represented far more than steel rails and locomotives. It became a symbol of political independence, regional solidarity and the possibility of building infrastructure without depending entirely on former colonial powers. For China, TAZARA became one of the most important symbols of its early relationship with Africa, demonstrating that Chinese engineers could complete a vast international project thousands of kilometres from home. Yet the decades that followed revealed a problem that would later appear repeatedly in major infrastructure projects across the continent. Constructing a railway is only the beginning. Keeping it operating efficiently requires regular maintenance, reliable locomotives, replacement parts, good management and a steady stream of freight and passengers producing enough revenue to support the system. TAZARA struggled with ageing equipment, competition from road transport and periods of weak financial performance. The railway survived, but often operated far below the potential imagined by its founders. Even so, the line never lost its strategic importance. More than fifty years after construction began, China returned to the project in a new form, with plans involving major investment in the rehabilitation and operation of the railway. The image is striking: a railway built with Chinese assistance during the era of African liberation now entering another phase of Chinese involvement generations later. Few infrastructure projects demonstrate so clearly that the life of a railway cannot be measured in the years required to build it. Tracks may remain in place for a century, passing through changing governments, economic systems and international alliances, and their value rises or falls depending on the economic world that grows around them.

By the beginning of the twenty first century, Chinese participation in African railways had changed dramatically. China was no longer the relatively poor country that had constructed TAZARA as an act of international solidarity. It had become a global manufacturing and financial power with some of the largest construction companies in the world, extensive experience building rail systems at home and banks capable of financing projects worth billions of dollars. One of the clearest examples of this new era appeared in Ethiopia and Djibouti. Ethiopia is one of Africa’s largest countries by population, yet it has no coastline, making access to the sea one of the most important economic questions facing the country. Most Ethiopian international trade passes through neighbouring Djibouti, creating a vital corridor between Addis Ababa and the port. For years trucks carried much of this freight along busy roads, while an older railway inherited from a previous era had become inadequate for the scale of modern trade. Ethiopian leaders wanted something entirely different, a modern electric railway that could become part of a wider strategy of industrialisation and economic growth. Chinese companies helped provide it. The Addis Ababa Djibouti Railway was constructed across roughly 750 kilometres, connecting the Ethiopian capital with Djibouti and its port facilities. Unlike the older railway it replaced, the new line was designed as an electrified modern system capable of carrying both passengers and large volumes of freight. Stations appeared along the route, electric locomotives travelled across dry landscapes and an infrastructure corridor that had once represented the limitations of Ethiopia’s geography was transformed into one of the most ambitious railway projects in eastern Africa. The logic behind the project was powerful. If containers arriving in Djibouti could be loaded onto trains and transported efficiently into Ethiopia, manufacturers and consumers could benefit from faster and more reliable connections with international markets. Industrial areas located close to the railway could gain easier access to ports, while heavy freight could be moved away from overcrowded roads. But the railway also revealed how difficult it can be to transform an impressive engineering project into a consistently profitable transport system. Trains require more than tracks. Freight must pass smoothly through customs, terminals must operate efficiently, electricity must remain dependable and companies need commercial reasons to choose rail instead of trucks. The people responsible for operating the railway also need specialist skills, which created questions about how quickly Ethiopian and Djiboutian staff could take over roles initially filled or supervised by Chinese personnel. Language differences and technical complexity made the transfer of knowledge more difficult than simply training someone to drive a train. At the same time Ethiopia had borrowed heavily for infrastructure and began facing pressure from foreign currency shortages and debt repayments. Negotiations with Chinese lenders eventually demonstrated that repayment conditions could be reconsidered, complicating the popular image of Chinese infrastructure loans as rigid arrangements from which governments could never escape. The Addis Ababa Djibouti Railway therefore became both an engineering achievement and a lesson in the economics of infrastructure. It showed what Chinese financing and construction could make possible, but also demonstrated that a modern railway reaches its full potential only when the institutions and businesses surrounding it function just as effectively as the trains themselves.

Few Chinese constructed railways in Africa have generated more discussion than Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway. For generations, the railway between the Kenyan coast and the interior was associated with the colonial era, when the British constructed what eventually became known as the Uganda Railway. By the modern period much of Kenya’s older metre gauge system had become slow and unreliable, while Mombasa had developed into one of the most important ports in eastern Africa and Nairobi had grown into one of the continent’s major commercial cities. Kenya wanted a modern railway connecting the two and eventually extending westward toward Uganda and the wider East African region. China Road and Bridge Corporation constructed the first major section, with Chinese lending providing most of the financing. The new railway ran approximately 472 kilometres from Mombasa to Nairobi and opened to passengers in 2017, followed later by an extension toward Naivasha. For travellers, the difference was immediately visible. Instead of relying on long road journeys or the ageing older railway, passengers could board modern trains linking the coast with the capital in a matter of hours. Freight trains also began transporting containers inland from Mombasa, offering the possibility of reducing some of the enormous number of trucks travelling along the highway. Millions of passengers have since used the railway and large quantities of freight have moved along the corridor, making the line a genuine part of Kenya’s transport system rather than simply an expensive monument. But the railway also became the centre of an intense national argument about debt, cost and economic value. Construction required billions of dollars, much of it borrowed from China, and railway revenue did not immediately cover the full costs associated with operations and financing. Critics questioned whether Kenya had paid too much, whether the contracts offered sufficient transparency and whether projected freight volumes justified the borrowing. Supporters pointed to shorter journeys, improved passenger transport, reduced road congestion and the wider economic benefits that transport infrastructure can produce over decades. Both sides were examining different parts of the same enormous project. A railway can carry millions of people and still struggle financially, because social and economic benefits are not always recorded as revenue on a railway company’s accounts. At the same time, economic benefits cannot automatically justify unlimited spending, particularly when governments must repay loans using money that could otherwise support schools, hospitals, electricity or other infrastructure. Kenya’s experience was made more complicated by the fact that the railway was originally imagined as part of a much larger regional network. A line connecting Mombasa, Nairobi, Kampala and potentially other East African centres would serve a far larger market than a railway that ends within Kenya. Delays in completing the western sections therefore changed the economics of the project. The story remains unfinished as Kenya continues considering further extensions. In many ways, the railway has become a test of whether a costly infrastructure project should be judged primarily by its financial accounts or by the broader transformation it may produce in trade and development over several decades.

In Nigeria and Angola, Chinese companies entered railway systems facing very different historical problems. Nigeria possesses the largest population in Africa and some of its busiest urban corridors, yet for many years its railway network had suffered from neglect and outdated infrastructure. The government developed plans for a modern standard gauge system linking major cities, but the enormous size of the country and the cost of construction meant that the network had to be developed in stages. One of the most significant early sections was the Abuja to Kaduna railway, constructed by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and opened in 2016. The line offered a modern passenger connection between the federal capital and Kaduna, providing an alternative to the road journey between the cities. It was followed by the Lagos to Ibadan railway, connecting Nigeria’s huge commercial centre with one of the largest cities in the southwest. These lines represented pieces of a far more ambitious national vision, one in which standard gauge railways could eventually connect major economic regions across Nigeria. Progress, however, has depended on the availability of financing, government contributions and the complicated process of constructing large infrastructure projects across densely populated areas. Angola presented another challenge altogether. Decades of civil war had devastated much of the country’s infrastructure, including the historic Benguela Railway, which once ran from the Atlantic port of Lobito across Angola toward the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Chinese companies played a major role in rebuilding the railway after the war, restoring more than a thousand kilometres of track and reconstructing stations, bridges and related infrastructure. The physical challenge was enormous. Parts of the route crossed areas that had experienced intense fighting and where landmines remained a danger, while years of neglect had left large sections of the old system unusable. Once restored, the railway again connected the Atlantic coast with the interior and created the possibility of a major freight route serving mineral producing areas in Central Africa. What happened next was particularly revealing. Although Chinese companies had been central to reconstruction, later operations became connected to a different international consortium, while Western governments and investors increasingly promoted the Lobito Corridor as an important route for African minerals and regional trade. Infrastructure built with Chinese participation had become part of an international project involving a much wider group of interests. This shows why the phrase Chinese railway can sometimes be misleading. China may finance or construct a railway, but once the track exists it becomes part of the geography and economy of the country in which it was built. Future governments can change operating arrangements, invite new investors, connect the railway to different trade corridors and use it for purposes that were not necessarily imagined when construction began. Concrete, bridges and rails may come from a particular international partnership, but their political meaning does not remain frozen forever.

The greater story of Chinese railway construction in Africa therefore cannot be reduced to a simple argument about whether China has been good or bad for the continent. Reality is far more interesting than either interpretation. Chinese companies arrived at a moment when many African countries urgently needed infrastructure and when traditional Western lenders and private investors were often unwilling to finance projects of the scale governments desired. They brought engineering experience, equipment, workers, financing and an ability to construct enormous projects relatively quickly. African governments gained railway lines that might otherwise have remained plans on paper for many more years. Cities were connected, ports became more accessible and some countries obtained modern railway technology on a scale they had never previously operated. At the same time, the enormous cost of these projects meant that mistakes were expensive. A railway built in the wrong place, built for unrealistic traffic forecasts or financed with repayments a government cannot comfortably manage can become a burden lasting decades. The success of a railway therefore depends on circumstances extending far beyond the nationality of the company that built it. Freight volumes matter. Maintenance matters. Customs procedures matter. Electricity supplies matter. Political stability matters. Regional cooperation matters. The quality of management may ultimately matter more than the speed with which the original track was laid. African governments have also gained experience from the first generation of large Chinese financed projects and are becoming more cautious about borrowing billions of dollars without clear plans for repayment. China itself has become more cautious, with its overseas lending moving away from some of the enormous projects associated with the earlier period of the Belt and Road Initiative. The future may therefore involve more partnerships, concessions, rehabilitation projects and smaller investments rather than another wave of enormous loans resembling those of the previous decade. Yet China is unlikely to disappear from African rail development. Its companies possess extensive experience on the continent, and many African governments continue to regard rail infrastructure as essential to economic development. TAZARA is being reconsidered for a new era, Kenya continues to pursue extensions to its network, Nigeria still has large sections of its planned railway system to complete and the Addis Ababa Djibouti corridor remains central to Ethiopia’s access to international trade. The most important question is no longer simply how many kilometres of railway China can build in Africa. The deeper question is what happens during the fifty years after those tracks are laid. A railway can be photographed on opening day, with flags flying, politicians delivering speeches and a new locomotive arriving at a polished station, but that moment reveals very little about whether the investment will ultimately succeed. The answer comes slowly, through millions of ordinary journeys, containers moving from ports to factories, minerals travelling from mines to international markets, workers maintaining electrical systems, governments repaying loans and businesses deciding whether to build warehouses and factories beside the tracks. In that sense, the Chinese railways of Africa are still unfinished stories. Some began during the struggles for African independence, others emerged from the economic ambitions of the new century and still others may become pieces of trade corridors whose full importance is only now appearing. They reveal China’s extraordinary rise as an international builder, but they also reveal the ambitions of African states attempting to overcome distances and infrastructure shortages inherited from the past. The trains moving across Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Nigeria and Angola are therefore carrying much more than passengers and cargo. They are carrying competing ideas about development, sovereignty, debt, trade and the economic future of a continent whose transport map is still being redrawn.