The International Silk Roads Symposium: Local and Transregional Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative took place on 22 February 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya. It was co-organised by the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA Nairobi), Zentrum für Moderne Orient (ZMO), and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Description
As China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forges ahead, it continues to receive exponential media, societal and academic attention globally. Greece’s Piraeus Harbour, Kenya’s SGR Railway and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, among others, are often cited in many BRI discussions for diverse reasons. Reactions emanating from these discussions vary, just like the effects of the BRI projects themselves: from very successful outcomes of some; to ambivalent or detrimental effects of others; to comparative debates where BRI projects are compared to other initiatives; to reflections on debt distress among participant states. While engaging with notions of “de-linking” and “re-linking” for reflection and exploration of BRI effects and experiences – whereby “link” also stands for drawing from “local insights and new knowledges” – this symposium aims at analysing current and future BRI perspectives across Asia, Africa and Europe. Within the De:Link//Re:Link research consortium (based in Berlin), the term “local” does not only include spatial but also, and even more so, relational components. This symposium will therefore focus on various emergent local and transregional perspectives on the BRI. We envision holding meaningful interdisciplinary discussions whose objective is to lay out and analyse interactions, tensions, challenges, and prospects across and beyond specific BRI-related projects. Our deliberations will examine experiences emanating from interactions among African, Chinese and European actors within the contexts of BRI-related projects and beyond.
Programme
10:00 – 10:05
Clélia Coret
Welcome Remarks
Dr. Clélia Coret is a historian and specialist on East Africa and the Swahili coast in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is the director of the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA Nairobi). During her PhD in Contemporary History (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), she researched the history of Witu, a 19th-century Swahili city-state. Her current postdoctoral research deals with the aftermath of slavery on the Kenyan coast.
10:05 – 10:25
Kai Kresse
Reflections on the De:link//Re:link Approach
Prof. Dr. Kai Kresse is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin, and Vice-Director of Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). He has long worked collaboratively on Kenya and East Africa, on issues in African philosophy, on Swahili thinkers in society, on Islam and Muslim debates, and on Indian Ocean connections. His publications include the two monographs Philosophising in Mombasa (2007) and Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience (2018), and the edited volume Rethinking Sage Philosophy (2023), together with Oriare Nyarwath.
10:25 – 10:55
John Njenga Karugia
The Belt and Road Initiative in a Transregional Perspective:
A Memory Politics and Memory Ethics Perspective on Infrastructure Development
Dr. John Njenga Karugia is a scholar of Transregional Memory Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Africa-China Relations, Asia Pacific Studies and Area Studies. He is a member of the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform with a focus on memory politics, memory ethics and responsible cosmopolitanism. He is a visiting professor at the Hasanuddin University in Makassar, Indonesia. He has held several research and teaching positions at Goethe University Frankfurt, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Leipzig and visiting scholar at Shanghai Maritime University and Duke University. He has made films including ‘Afrasian Memories in East Africa’.
11:15 – 11:50
Abraham Korir Sing’Oei
Kenya-China Belt and Road Initiatve Infrastructure Projects:
Strategic Partnership and Development Cooperation
Dr. Abraham Korir Sing’Oei is Kenya’s Principal Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs. Previously he served as Senior Legal Advisor to the Deputy President of Kenya where he provided counsel and guidance on intergovernmental relations and coordination of international development partnerships with a focus on open governance and rule of law. He is an International Law expert who served as: Litigation Director, Katiba Institute, Conflict and Rule of Law Specialist at USAID and Founding Director, Centre for Minority Rights Development (Cemiride). He studied and researched international law in Kenya, South Africa and USA.
11:50 – 12:20
Jerotich Seii
Contradictory Visions and Legacies:
Impacts of the Invasion of the Chinese Property Development Association in Nairobi
Jerotich Seii is a humanitarian, development and migration management consultant with 27 years of professional experience in the United Nations and various non-governmental organisations across 30 African countries. In addition to her professional capacities, Jerotich has spent the last six years in Kenya building on citizen-focused action protection of the Constitution, human rights and rule of law in areas of energy, social protection, urban planning and environmental protection. Jerotich, also known as the Active Citizen, currently sits on the E-Mobility Policy Taskforce as the Vice Chair.
12:20 – 13:00
Kelvin Saidinga and Everline Mugenya
Engineering the Belt and Road Initiative:
Kenya’s SGR Railway in Relation to the BRI
Eng. Kelvin Saidinga Lenayiarra is a Railway Signaling Engineer at Kenya Railways Corporation and a beneficiary of the BRI through the CRBC fully funded scholarship. The scholarship aimed to train 100 Kenyan students in railway engineering, maintenance, construction, and management at Beijing Jiaotong University. He previously worked as a maintenance engineer at Ruver Railways Service. He is also a registered graduate engineer with the Engineers Board of Kenya.
Everline Mugenya is a professional with more than two years’ experience in rail operation and maintenance. She directly benefited from the BRI through the CRBC, securing a full scholarship to pursue engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University. Presently, she works at the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway as an engineer in the Signalling, Communication, Electricity and Information division. She also worked at Timcon Associates, where she participated in consultancy services for the development and implementation of the Road Crash Database System in Kenya for key stakeholders. She volunteers with Soroptimist International, a global NGO dedicated to women’s empowerment.
14:00 – 14:40
Kadara Swaleh
Kenya-China Relationship Through the Local Perspective
Kadara Swaleh is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universitat Berlin. He is also a research fellow at Leibnitz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) Berlin, Germany. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the impact of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) on labourers and small traders in the informal sector in Mombasa, Kenya, using translocality and theorising from the South as a heuristic lens. Kadara obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology and archaeology and a postgraduate degree in religious studies from University of Nairobi. He previously taught at Pwani University’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.
14:40 – 15:20
Gloriah Amondi
Reflections on China and Kenya:
Living and Studying in China and Teaching Mandarin Language in Kenya
Gloriah Amondi is a trained lawyer, a journalist and a writer. Currently, she writes for Nation Newspaper. She’s also an essayist and fiction writer and contributes to a popular blog called Bikozulu. She writes for a science organisation named Alliance for Science and is currently a Minority Africa Writers’ fellow and the 2023 International Literary Seminar (ILS) fellowship winner. She has lived and studied at different universities in China, including at the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine where she briefly studied acupuncture. She speaks English, Swahili, Luo, German and Chinese. When she’s not writing, she teaches Mandarin to children.
15:40 – 16:20
Mohamed Hussein Abdille
China in a Global Perspective:
The Chinese State’s Strategic Futures and Alternative Medicine
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Hussein Abdille is Professor for Human Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine, Egerton University, Kenya. He is a visiting professor at Wuhan Institute of Virology and China Medical University. Through his initiative, many Kenyans have been able to study at Asian Universities. Notable among his contributions are: the successful establishment of strong bilateral relationships with Chinese and Indian institutions, leading to successful initiatives such as establishment of a China-Africa Joint Research Centre at JKUAT; as well as the establishment of the Chinese Confucius Institute at Egerton University and five further institutions across Africa. He studied medicine in India, UK, Switzerland, and USA.
The De:Link // Re:Link International Silk Roads Symposium was organized by:
Clélia Coret | Marion Asego | John Njenga Karugia | Kai Kresse | Kadara Swaleh
IFRA Nairobi || Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin || Zentrum für Moderne Orient (ZMO)
