10 years on, BRI is humming

Continent benefits as initiative helps pull in foreign investment

Ten years ago, when China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, Andrew Gatera, then a college student in Beijing, could hardly imagine it would play such a big role in his career in Africa.

Gatera returned to his native Rwanda after completing his bachelor's and master's degrees in Chinese literature and culture at the Communication University of China in Beijing.

He started a tourism business in 2017 offering international visitors safari tours and treks in Rwanda's volcanoes and other East African regions. With his fluency in Mandarin, Chinese tourists have become his biggest and most important customers.