Contractors, petty traders, investors, and entrepreneurs from China have been pouring into Uganda for the past decade. China is a top investor in the east African country, accounting for as much as half of total foreign investment between 2014 and 2015, according to the Uganda Investment Authority.
But according to Ugandan immigration officials, there’s one major downside: an increasing number of Chinese men are marrying Ugandan women to gain residency and continue their business interests in the country.
Officials told a parliamentary committee in late November that they are seeing more and more Chinese-Ugandan couples, often in sham unions. Couples are normally interviewed before spousal status is granted and Chinese men involved in sham marriages are deported.
“But we have many who are marrying and even producing… Even our Ugandan women are accepting to [reproduce] with these men,” an official from Uganda’s directorate of citizenship and immigration control told the committee.
Major infrastructure projects like Uganda’s Mandela National Stadium, a $1.7 billion hydropower dam in western Uganda, and the highway connecting Entebbe to Kampala have all been built by Chinese companies. Attracted by Uganda’s stability and demand for cheap goods, independent traders and business people are also opening factories and retail shops selling imported Chinese goods. There are between 10,000 and 50,000 Chinese in the country, local Chinese expatriates estimate.
But now, tensions appear to be rising. Ugandan authorities are conducting more raids to catch foreigners living in the country illegally. In July, 12 Chinese were arrested for violating immigration laws.
Government-to-government relations have also come under strain. Last month, Ugandan lawmakers summoned a Chinese executive of the state-owned China Communication Construction to explain the circumstances of his company’s securing a $475 million contract to build an expressway in Entebbe.
Annoyed during the briefing, Zhong Weidong, managing director of the company, told the panel, “China assists African countries to develop. If you don’t like, it can stop; we can stop.”
Excellent ! Any where they can find ” love,” so be it . Too many Black women limit themselves to one kind of man, one kind of treatment. Exploring with the Chinese man cannot be such a horrible thing. I mean, they bring them to ” develop” the country and do not expect some meddling and curiosity involving tasting the Black woman?
Some of the marriages may be fraud, or marriages of convienence, but is not that what marriage is – ” an arrangement ” ” a contract?”
I am happy for those couples that find true love and I am more happy for the Ugandan woman who gets an upgrade financially to her life.
I use to think the Chinese are so foreign until a few years ago… they came from Africa centuries ago you know. They also face the same discrimination and racism as Blacks and other brown races.
If you doubt their strong African genes and don’t believe me, RESEARCH THE ” SANS” PEOPLE of Africa. I studied them. Amazingly, their features are almost pure Chinese, eyes, color, features… but they are BLACKS… pure Africans, but the hundred years old Asian genes from migrations remains .
We cannot diss the Asians if we not pushing our own children into Science, Technology and Architecture .
Please go nyam some plastic rice….they come in let a set of parasites and don’t give a damn about anything but money, not even if dem own a people dem care bout unless there is financial gain….Chinese specifically.
Also, no matter what discrimination or prejudices (there is no systematic racism against them, they are more accepted than blacks…always have been) , no matter how we (not them) traveled to China however many thousands of years ago til dem all have hidden indigenous tribes of black people in a China…and hidden Bc china like anywhere else in they discriminate against darker skin…just because they integrate and procreate in black society does not mean they like us….look at the Chinese in Jamaica….look at the attitudes of the new Chinese immigrants. …you sound frighten
Your a idiot these Chinese men arent looking for love they want papers fool.
Everybody use the black race when convienent for them, as long as the women are smart and secure something for themselves and the children that is gonna come from this union. Knowing black people they are just glad that they have a mix race child. Happens in Jamaica all the time. God help us.