‘Win-win’ contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa's Freedom Railway with the ‘Chinese of today’

Abstract

As infrastructure development has become a key ingredient in Africa–China relations, the role of African governments in co-determining the design, funding and governance of the continent's infrastructures has come under close scrutiny. This article sheds light on the rehabilitation of a symbol of Sino–African friendship: the Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). Employing Jessop's strategic-relational approach, it is shown that the strategies of the shareholding governments in the negotiations with a Chinese consortium were informed by strategic learning from previous railway privatisations, corresponding cost–benefit analyses and reflection about Chinese commercial interests. Zambia's indebtedness and Tanzania's autocratic developmental state under President Magufuli formed crucial elements of the structural context in which the fate of Africa's Freedom Railway was negotiated. The article transcends both crudely structuralist accounts of a supposedly all-powerful China and voluntarist conceptions of African agency that are void of structure. Assessing (African) agency requires analytical sensitivity towards the dialectical interaction between specific strategic capacities and strategically selective political–economic contexts.

From Loan-Financed to Privatised Infrastructure? Tracing China's Turn Towards Public–Private Partnerships in Africa

“…Informed by previous unsuccessful railway privatisations in both countries, the governments rejected the terms of a thirty-year Rehabilitate–Operate–Transfer PPP proposed by a Chinese consortium in 2016. Unsurprisingly, the parties disagreed not least on the financial terms, as the Chinese investors expected the shareholding governments to take on all outstanding debts of the company (about USD 800 million) and demanded far-reaching tax exemptions (Zajontz, 2022d). The shareholding governments have since asked the Chinese SOEs involved to conduct another feasibility study as a basis for a renewed proposal.…”

Book Review: Kenya’s and Zambia’s relations with China 1949-2019

“…This reflects discussions on structure and agency in China-Africa relations, and international relations more broadly. More particularly the ‘agency debate’ or ‘agency turn’ that Zajontz (2022) refers to, and which he nuances following Links (2021). Zajontz reasons that in response to a lack of agency in prior discussions, agency now seems to take centre-stage thereby often overruling structure.…”