Railway Talks With China Collapse as Uganda Turns to Turkey (1)

Uganda said it terminated a deal with a Chinese contractor to build a $2.3 billion railroad after it failed to secure Beijing’s financial backing for the project.

The East African nation has been in talks with Yapi Merkezi to take over the development of the project, and expects the Turkish company to submit an expression of interest in weeks, according to Perez Wamburu, Uganda’s project coordinator.

“The contract was terminated, things weren’t working out,” Wamburu said in an interview on Thursday.

It marks an end to eight years of Uganda pursuing Chinese funding for the project to build the 273-kilometer ...