China is preparing to gift Zimbabwe a new US$140 million parliament building, the latest in a series of grand projects across Africa aimed at deepening its influence on the continent, where it is the continent’s largest trading partner and lender.
The site at Mount Hampden, about 18km (11 miles) northwest of the capital Harare, heralds the start of a new city.
The 650-seat building will replace the current 100-seat, colonial-era building which Zimbabwean officials consider too small for the country’s 350 legislators.
Sitting on the top of a hill, the imposing circular complex, which has been built by China’s Shanghai Construction Group, is fully paid for by Beijing.
The contractors said the facility was now ready to be handed over, 3½ years after construction started on a project that employed more than 500 Chinese technicians and 1,200 local workers.
“There is no doubt that the new parliament will become a landmark building in Zimbabwe and even in the whole of Southern Africa,” Shanghai Construction Group manager Libo Cai said on Wednesday.
“It will be yet another milestone for the China-Zimbabwe friendship which keeps getting stronger year after year.”
The building covers a total area of 33,000 square metres (355,200 sq ft) and has two main buildings – a six-storey office building and a four-storey parliament building.
Cai said the building was fully funded by the Chinese government.
To ease congestion in the crowded capital, Zimbabwe plans to relocate the judiciary and executive branches, and some of its administrative units, to the site. A statehouse and official residences for the House speaker and Senate president will also be built there.
The new city will eventually become home to the country’s reserve bank, upmarket suburbs, hotels and shopping malls.
The Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe said in a tweet that “thanks to the hardworking of the Chinese and Zimbabwean technicians, it [the parliament] is expected to trigger more mega projects in the Mount Hampden area and boost the development of a new satellite city”.
