Resources - Center for International Private Enterprise

Infrastructure Financing and Democratic Resilience: A Tale of Two Railroads

Case Studies

This paper examines two flagship BRI rail projects—the Kenya Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway (AADR)—to assess how differences in transparency, civic oversight, and media environments shape both economic outcomes and political legitimacy. Despite similar scale, cost, and timing, the two projects have acquired starkly different public reputations. The Kenyan project has been mired in controversy and litigation, while the Ethiopian project has attracted comparatively little public scrutiny. This divergence reflects not fundamental differences in project quality, but contrasting civic and institutional contexts.

Governing Trusted Supply Chains: Public-Private Coordination in an Era of Geoeconomic Competition

Guides & Tools

The global economy is undergoing a structural transformation in which geopolitical considerations increasingly shape trade, investment, and technology flows. The era in which economic interdependence was assumed to generate political stability has given way to a more contested environment, characterized by strategic competition, selective decoupling, and the active use of economic instruments for security purposes....

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