REUTERS–Traffic will soar above the muddy swamp between Uganda’s capital and its international airport when a new Chinese-built highway opens in a few months time, but the road itself is mired in controversy.
The government has partly funded the 51-km (30-mile) $580 million expressway with a loan, part of $11 billion in borrowings in the decade since the World Bank canceled debts about a third that size as part of debt relief for poor states.
Uganda says the four-lane road is the jewel in the crown of an infrastructure programme that will boost economic growth; critics accuse President Yoweri Museveni, in power for 32 years, of squandering debt relief and mortgaging much-anticipated oil revenues before crude starts to flow in 2020.
China alone has loaned the east African nation nearly $3 billion and is in talks for $2.3 billion more as part of its vast overseas development Belt and Road scheme.
“Uganda will grind to a halt as a country because of Museveni’s reckless borrowing. We’re like a patient on life support,
