The Conversation published on 16 May 2022 a commentary titled "Mombasa Port: How Kenya's Auditor-General Misread China's Standard Gauge Railway Contracts" by Deborah Brautigam.
In 2018, a leaked letter from the former Kenyan auditor-general's office sparked a rumor that Kenya had staked Mombasa Port as collateral for the Chinese-financed Standard Gauge Railway, leading to charges of debt trap diplomacy. A detailed study by the China-Africa Research Initiative concluded that the rumor stemmed from a misreading by the former auditor-general, who mistakenly labelled the ports authority as a borrower, responsible for repaying the Chinese railway loans.
