China Exim Bank holds Belt and Road forum in Nairobi; Kenya Railways expects first phase of SGR extension to Kisumu within two years

The Export-Import Bank of China held a Belt and Road financing forum in Nairobi on 21 October, run at the same time as a session in Beijing, the Chinese Embassy in Kenya said. It was the first time the Financial Street Forum Annual Conference had held a satellite forum in Africa.

Chinese Ambassador Guo Haiyan spoke at the Nairobi venue. Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi and Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir attended, along with representatives of Chinese companies. The forum was titled "Upholding Openness and Win-Win Cooperation To Foster New Dynamism For High Quality Belt and Road Cooperation".

The bank's chairman, Chen Huaiyu, said it had extended more than 7 trillion yuan in Belt and Road loans over more than a decade, covering over 130 partner countries, the Chinese financial newspaper Securities Times reported on 21 October. China Daily gave the dollar value as US$1.05 trillion. At the Central Bank of Kenya's rate of KSh 129.81 to the dollar on 15 October, that is about KSh 136 trillion. The figure covers all borrowers, not Kenya alone.

Chen said the bank's future focus is clean energy, the digital economy, agriculture and industrial cooperation, with financing models that balance development with debt sustainability: parallel financing, joint financing and on-lending.

Guo said: "We will closely align Belt and Road cooperation with the AU's Agenda 2063," China Daily reported. The embassy said she added that China is ready to deepen infrastructure cooperation with African countries, make full use of the zero-tariff policy for Africa and take China-Africa financial cooperation to deeper levels.

The embassy said Mbadi and Chirchir described the Belt and Road Initiative as an important platform for deepening mutually beneficial cooperation, trade and investment, and more diversified financing. Mbadi told the forum it is an important framework for improving connectivity, expanding trade and widening access to development finance, China Daily reported.

Philip Mainga, managing director of Kenya Railways Corporation, said construction has begun on extending the Mombasa–Nairobi standard gauge railway (SGR) to Kisumu. "We expect the first phase of the project, extending to Kisumu, to be completed within two years," he said. He named Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan and Rwanda as countries that could gain from better transport links, and said avocados, coffee and tea were among the goods that could move more by rail.

In February, Mainga said phase 2B of the line would be completed by June 2027, the Kenyan news site Citizen Digital reported on 24 February.

The National Treasury's June 2026 public debt bulletin puts outstanding loans from China at KSh 619.82 billion at the end of June, out of total external debt of KSh 5,793.66 billion. The Chinese yuan made up 11.5 per cent of external debt by currency, against 54.9 per cent for the US dollar.

External debt service for the financial year to June came to KSh 716.10 billion, of which 24.40 per cent went to bilateral creditors, the bulletin says. On 7 October 2025 Mbadi announced that Kenya had converted three China Exim Bank railway loans from dollars to yuan, which he said would save about US$215 million a year.