China's foreign minister Wang Yi has rejected suggestions that Beijing is luring African countries into debt traps by offering them massive loans, dismissing the idea as a narrative pushed by opponents to poverty reduction.
Wang said before he visited Beijing-funded infrastructure projects in Kenya, China's considerable lending to Africa was mutually benefiting and not a strategy to extract diplomatic and commercial concessions.
That isn't a fact. He told reporters in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa that it is speculation being played out by some with ulterior motives.
This narrative has been created by those who don't want to see development in Africa. If there is any trap, it's about poverty and underdevelopment, he said, speaking through an interpreter.
Wang is on a three-nation tour of Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros following a trip to Africa by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in November, which in part aimed at countering China's growing influence on the continent.
China is China's biggest trading partner, with direct trade worth over $200 billion 177 billion euros in 2019, according to official Chinese figures.
China is Kenya's second largest lender after the World Bank, and has funded a number of costly infrastructure projects that have raised concerns about Nairobi taking on more debt than it can afford.
Wang and a team of government ministers held a closed-door meeting in Mombasa and signed agreements on trade and investment, health, security, climate change and green technology transfer.
He met President Uhuru Kenyatta and visited the Port of Mombasa, where China is constructing a new $353 million terminal to allow larger oil tankers to berth.
The visit is a testament to the deepening of relations between the two countries, said Raychelle Omamo, Kenya's foreign minister.
Beijing has funded Kenya's most expensive infrastructure project since independence and loaned $5 billion for the construction of a railway line from Mombasa in 2017.
Wang described the railway as a benchmark of the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar push to improve trade links across the globe by building landmark infrastructure during a visit to Mombasa in January 2020.
But observers raised red flags over Kenya's reliance on Chinese funding, warning that debt was soaring to unmanageable levels.
Aly-Khan Satchu, a Kenyan geopolitical and economic analyst, said the East African nation was at a disadvantage negotiating deals and often stuck with high-interest repayments.
He told AFP that these investments are not going to make a return on investments for the foreseeable future.
They have taken out loans and they are making losses every month. In recent years, Beijing's lending spree has slowed as borrowers have pushed back on terms and the coronaviruses have inflicted economic pain.
Satchu said that China was shifting its focus from infrastructure to greater trade and saw promise in deepening ties with Indian Ocean economies. He said that the Chinese are trying to rebalance their relationship with Africa, with a lot of emphasis on agriculture and lending to the private sector.
Wang has already visited Eritrea and after Kenya and heads to the Indian Ocean island nation of the Comoros.