China continues Africa dam project despite Ebola outbreak

Conakry

AS workers at Western companies fled West Africa during the world's worst-ever Ebola outbreak, a state-owned Chinese company carried on.

China International Water & Electric Corp completed the Kaleta dam on budget and a year ahead of schedule in July, ending chronic power shortages in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. Construction continued even as companies including London-based Rio Tinto and Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal paused projects in the region. "The Chinese saved us," Lansana Fofana, 63, says, as he stands on the US$526 million hydroelectric dam that China financed and he oversees.

For Mr Fofana, the 1,545-metre wall is a monument to the positive role China can play in Africa. In other parts of the continent, Chinese companies have been accused of treating workers poorly, building substandard infrastructure and damaging the environment. "With Western companies, costs would have gone up and they would have walked out as soon as the first case of Ebola hit," Mr Fofana says as he walks beneath a buzzing pylon towards the barrier's roaring overflow. "This gives us a real basis for our economy. Without power there is no development."

China's experience in other African countries, including Zambia where resentment against Chinese employers erupted into deadly protests, has led to concern from the government in Beijing, and it's now making a concerted effort to reach out to local communities, according to Yejoo Kim, a researcher at Stellenbosch University's Centre for Chinese Studies in South Africa's Western Cape province. "They know about the outcry on the ground level and they are trying to rectify that," she said. "The perception is slowly changing. It's not going to happen overnight."

Successful projects also help Africa's leaders. The completion of Kaleta tripled Guinea's electricity generation and gave many residents of the capital stable power for the first time in their lives, a dividend for President Alpha Conde who faces re-election this month. Mr Conde is so proud of the dam that he built a private residence next to it and promoted Mr Fofana's predecessor to energy minister.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's trip to Africa last month included visits to the three countries hardest hit by Ebola: Guinea and its two neighbours, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which together lost 11,310 people. WP