China clinched a $3.8 billion-deal with East African leaders, allowing the Chinese to fund and build a major railway in Kenya, and eventually to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.

The Standard Gauge Railway agreement was signed on May 11 in Nairobi, Kenya, by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. It was witnessed by presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Salva Kiir of South Sudan, as well as representatives from Burundi, Tanzania and the African Development Bank.

China, via Exim Bank of China, will finance 90 percent of the project, and Kenya will pay for the remaining 10 percent. A Chinese firm will construct the railway line.

Construction of the 379 mile standard gauge railway from Kenya’s port city of Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi, will begin in October and is expected to last 3½ years. Thereafter, the rail line will be expanded to link Kampala, Kigali, Bujumbura and Juba, drawing unmistakable similarities—howbeit less ambitious—to Cecil John Rhodes’s intended Cape to Cairo Railway. Kenyatta said that the railway project will “eventually unify all of East Africa.”

The new railway will replace old tracks built over a century ago by the British. The old, narrow-gauge railway line is a diminishing vestige of British colonialism and influence, even as President Kenyatta implied. But that influence is rapidly giving way to Chinese neo-colonialism.

China is using its economic clout as the second-largest economy in the world to get what it wants without too many strings attached. Kenyatta lauded China as an “honorable,” newfound partner in trade and cooperation. Uganda’s Museveni gave even stronger adulation: “We are happy to see that China is concentrating on the real issues of development,” he said. “They don’t give lectures on how to run local governments and other issues I don’t want to mention,” alluding to the West’s criticism of Uganda’s anti-homosexual legislation. China seemingly has no moral qualms in signing deals even with South Sudan’s Salva Kiir, in spite of the world’s newest nation’s devastating civil war, supported in part by over 9,000 child soldiers.

It is through projects like railway construction that China is making inroads into Africa’s largely untapped natural resources and trade opportunities. China needs these to power its $9 trillion economy and feed its 1.3 billion people.

The scramble for Africa is going to intensify into a resource war. Read our article “The Battleground” to see how Africa will inevitably be a theater of an explosive war for resources.