African Nations Mend and Make Do as China Tightens Belt and Road

African Nations Mend and Make Do as China Tightens Belt and Road
A view shows part of a construction site of the Nairobi Expressway, undertaken by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis, along Uhuru Highway in Nairobi, Kenya, on Oct. 17, 2021. Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
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NAIROBI—Deep in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old.

It’s a distinctly low-tech phase for the Chinese communist regime’s Belt and Road drive in Africa to create the trade highways of the future.