# The Road That Doesn't Count (plain version)

**Verdict:** Transparency rankings of foreign-funded infrastructure often measure the shape of the money and the publishing culture of financiers, not the openness of governments. Three boundary rules, settled before scoring, fix the comparison.

## The story, plainly

Two expressways, financed from the same country.

Road one is Uganda's Entebbe-Kampala Expressway. The Export-Import Bank of China lent the Government of Uganda USD 350 million at 2 percent, repayable over about forty years; Uganda added about USD 126 million; a Chinese state contractor built it; it opened in 2018. The money passed through the treasury and left a paper trail: loan agreement, debt record, budget lines, audits. Every monitoring definition counts it as foreign-funded, because the definitions were written for exactly this shape: follow the loan, find the project.

Road two is an unnamed expressway of roughly two billion dollars, a real case used as an archetype, built under a build-operate-transfer concession. A foreign company financed it, built it, and operates it for decades, repaying itself from tolls before handing it over. The state granted the concession, but no loan touched the treasury. Ask definitions built on sovereign loans and aid flows whether it is foreign-funded and the answer is no. It drops out of the study before scoring begins.

That is the core defect: definitions keyed on financing instruments (sovereign loans, official development assistance) see the finance that still flows the old way and go blind to concessions, equity stakes, joint ventures, supplier's credit, and guarantees. The blindness is not neutral, and it is not about any one country's money: both roads here have the same financier country. The problem is the shape, not the flag.

Two distortions follow.

First, scoring that credits any published information, whoever published it, flatters projects financed by institutions with strong publishing cultures. A funder's rich project page can earn a government a "transparent" score while that government publishes nothing. You graded the bank's website.

Second, scoring that demands records a structure never generated condemns the newer shapes. A build-operate-transfer project whose concession was negotiated directly with the company that financed and built it never held a tender. Writing a zero for the missing tender record measures the deal's structure and calls it secrecy. A zero can mean three things: the record was hidden (the only real failure), the record never existed, or the record does not exist yet. And where a structure skips the tender, the public's questions do not vanish; the disclosure expectation shifts to the concession award and its terms.

## The three boundary rules

1. **Define eligibility by purpose, material stake, and control, not instrument.** Public asset or public service under government-granted concession? A material project interest (financing, ownership, revenue, guarantee, concession) held by a foreign-controlled party? Yes to both: it counts.
2. **Ask why a record is missing before scoring it.** Hidden scores zero; never-existed is excluded with the expectation shifted to the records that do exist; not-yet-due waits. The denominator adjusts so honest reporting never looks worse than silence.
3. **Credit the publisher, and give every figure a passport.** Classify information by who controls its publication. A funder's page proves existence; only government publication is government disclosure. Every figure carries source, retrieval date, currency, and exchange rate with its date.

## Key figures

| Item | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Road one loan | USD 350 million, 2 percent, ~40 years, Exim Bank of China | AidData project 14235 |
| Road one, Uganda contribution | ~USD 126 million (total ~USD 476 million) | Uganda Ministry of Works |
| Road one contractor / opening | China Communications Construction Company / June 2018 | Uganda Ministry of Works |
| Road two | roughly USD 2 billion, build-operate-transfer, a real case used as an unnamed archetype | see provenance note |

## Provenance

This piece draws general lessons from recent cross-regional work mapping how foreign-funded infrastructure is defined and measured. That work is not mine to publish, so no programmes, partners, or study countries are named, and road two is an archetype. Road one is public record:

- AidData, "China Eximbank provides $350 million preferential buyer's credit for Entebbe-Kampala Toll Road Construction Project": https://china.aiddata.org/projects/14235
- Uganda Ministry of Works and Transport, Kampala-Entebbe Expressway: https://www.works.go.ug/component/k2/item/25-kampala-entebbe-expressway

Figures are as reported by these sources. Nothing here scores, ranks, or characterises any country.

**The closing line:** Before you compare governments, make sure you are not comparing their bankers.