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The end of the railway in Duka Moja, Kenya.

The end of the railway in Duka Moja, Kenya.

Photographer: Luis Tato/Bloomberg
Politics

China’s Built a Railroad to Nowhere in Kenya

Beijing is withholding the $4.9 billion needed to finish the project, once a flagship for Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.

Gleaming concrete sleepers run across a new railway bridge in Kenya, the latest stretch of a Chinese-built line from the coast all the way to Uganda.

Only, it doesn’t quite reach the border. Instead, the railroad ends abruptly by a sleepy village about 75 miles west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the tracks laid but unused.

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