The Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a 31.6 Million Dollars grant with the Government of China in view of the proposed ECOWAS Headquarters building project.
According to Ecowas, the need for a new building for commission was necessitated by increasing number of staff which led them to presently operate from three buildings distance apart from each other.
But critics have questioned China’s motives for the donation, which places it at the center of West African political arena.
According to CNN, it’s not the first time China has constructed buildings at the heart of Sub-Saharan African politics for free.
China also built and funded the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa in 2012 at a cost of 200 million U.S. dollars, the country’s largest aid construction project since the 1970s.
Few months ago, Le Monde, a French publication reported that data from AU computers in Addis had been transferred to Shanghai servers from 2012 to 2017. Chinese Govt and the African Union denied the allegations, the later maintaining that it has no secrets to spy on.
In 2017, China broke ground on a fully-funded $58 million parliament in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
Sources; ECOWAS, CNN, Foreign Afairs,
