News Analysis Just as Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has begun to run into rough sledding in Africa, the European Union (EU) has launched its own initiative. Brussels’ so-called Global Gateway scheme would, like China’s BRI, offer developing economies financing for infrastructure projects and help with realizing them. According to the announcement from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Dec. 1, 2021, the program would have an initial funding of 300 billion euros (about $340 billion). It clearly aims at offering competition for the BRI and could have favorable effects even if the European scheme is less successful than Brussels hopes. Much like the BRI, Europe’s Global Gateway would offer few, if any, grants. Mostly it would work through loans and guarantees. Unlike the BRI, which focuses on basic infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, rail links, ports, and the like, the EU’s Gateway scheme would focus on …
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