I was an hour and a half late for a meeting at the Hamlin Fistula Foundation, on the outskirts of Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, but my taxi driver just shrugged. What did I expect? It was March and Addis Ababa’s roads had clogged up into near-permanent gridlock as the country’s first commuter light-rail service, which has just opened, neared completion. Above us, the concrete viaducts that would bear the brand-new trains represented a shiny new future. But down here, on the streets, it was chaos.

Of course, this is nothing new. My taxi driver would have had a lot in common with the cab drivers and businesses of Edinburgh, who complained bitterly for six years about the disruption to their streets before the Scottish capital’s tram system finally opened in 2014.



Both systems are controversial and expensive but it turns out that building in Africa is a lot cheaper than building in Scotland. The final bill for Edinburgh’s tram system (population 493,000) came to £770m, while the Addis system (population 3.4 million) cost, according to the BBC, £303m.

The African project, the first fully electrified tram service in sub-Saharan Africa, was funded in part by China’s Exim Bank and built by the China Railway Group. China is making a huge investment across the continent. Indeed, in another part of Addis Ababa, the monumental headquarters of the Africa Union was entirely funded by China as a gift. A gift costing £127m.



It is little wonder that as George Osborne continues his tour of China to rustle up investment in the UK economy, local government leaders are an eager part of his entourage. The northern powerhouse won’t fund itself, and Osborne’s enthusiasm for devolving greater funding to local regions does not extend to overruling Network Rail’s cancellation of electrification of northern rail links. So who can blame northern council bosses for going cap in hand to the Chinese.



UK should do more business with China, says George Osborne Read more

It’s not the first time local government has looked east. In July, delegations from Leeds city council, Manchester city council and the Greater Manchester combined authority went with the prime minister on his trade mission to Singapore and Malaysia.



But the northern councillors and officials will need sharp elbows. Others around the globe have also realised the potential. In January, it was announced that Singapore would build a brand-new city in India, 10 times its own size. Attracting inward investment has always been an important, and often controversial, aspect of local government. But if our own government won’t cough up for vital transport infrastructure, what’s local government supposed to do?



Sign up here for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday. Follow us on Twitter via@Guardianpublic