The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation posted on 14 May 2021 a story titled "China to Build Kenya's New Foreign Affairs HQ, Pledges Sustained Development Support" by Eric Biegon.
The principal secretary in Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Kenya appreciates the "generous grant" from China for construction of a new ministry headquarters. It is a virtual certainty a Chinese company will build the structure.
China has a long history of building ministries of foreign affairs in African countries. A Heritage Foundation study in 2020 by Joshua Meservey identified foreign ministries in sixteen African countries built by Chinese companies, although most of them were presumably constructed under contract and not provided free of charge by China. At a minimum, however, those in Mozambique, Uganda, and Sierra Leone were built by Chinese companies and gifted by China. Most of the others were likely financed by loans from China.
This raises a serious question. If Chinese companies build and China provides grant funding for a country's foreign ministry, will that country's foreign policy be truly independent?
