The 273 km, $2.2bn railway line, running east from Kampala, Uganda, to Malaba, just across the border in Kenya, should have been built by now.
In 2015, a Chinese state-owned firm, the China Harbour Engineering Company, won the contract to build the crucial transport link.
But after eight years with no movement on the project, this January, the Ugandan government pitched the project to a Turkish company, Yapi Merkezi.
The episode was not a one-off. Turkish firms have gotten good at outfoxing Chinese construction rivals.
In 2019, Turkish multinational Summa beat Chinese companies to secure contracts for the construction of a parliament building and shopping mall in Equatorial Guinea, as well as a convention centre in Rwanda. Yapi Merkezi won a tender in Ethiopia against a Chinese company in 2017 to build one of the country’s most modern train lines. In 2021, it outbid a Chinese competitor in Tanzania to win a $900m railway project.
China’s gargantuan state finances mean that Turkish companies lack the backing to constitute a real threat. But recent successes over Chinese counterparts show that while Turkey may not be a fully-fledged rival in Africa, it is nipping at China’s heels across the continent
Turkey has been making inroads into African markets for decades. It began in 1998, with the Africa Action Plan, which aimed at boosting bilateral relations continent-wide. But it was under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration that Turkey really began to focus on the continent with large-scale economic and diplomatic investments.
The number of Turkish embassies has increased from just 12 in 2002 to 43; Turkish Airlines now flies to 61 places across the continent; the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency has opened 22 offices; and the Maarif Foundation has 175 schools in 26 African countries.
Turkish construction companies have followed suit. They now do 17.8 percent of international construction business in Africa, according to 2021 figures from the Turkish Contractors Association, which stated that the total volume of projects undertaken by Turkish construction companies now surpassed $77bn.
Source: Middleeasteye
