The inauguration of two new electricity-generating units in Zimbabwe’s Hwange power station last month was not an unfamiliar scene when it comes to major infrastructure projects in Africa.
There, in a rural corner of the southern African nation, government officials and the Chinese ambassador gathered to ribbon-cut and laud the expansion of the coal-fired plant meant to reduce power cuts in the country – and Beijing’s role in funding it.
The project, backed by roughly $1 billion in Chinese loans years before Beijing stopped funding new coal-powered projects overseas, is one of the continent’s numerous big-ticket projects bankrolled by Chinese lenders under leader Xi Jinping’s hallmark Belt and Road Initiative.