A proposal to build a sub-Saharan Africa electrical grid across 12 countries

No it's starting to get resolved, see recent Zambia debt restructure. The TLDR is western propaganda who owns majority of African debt wants to push PRC debt trap narrative to pressure PRC to take haircut losses while they don't. PRC said lol no, and after 2 years, traditional (i.e. IMF) and private lenders, most from west, finally agreed to debt restructuring on their end to.

Is this more or less exploitive than the western powers?

Shell will massacre villages that resist exploitation, how many massacres have the Chinese financed so far?

Tajikstan borders China, so they were already vulnerable to Chinese territorial claims and military action.

However, this isn't the case in Africa. If some African country (esp. an inland one) decides to default on loans to China, what's China going to do? China has almost no ability to project power on a faraway continent. Of course, China could cut off trade, but just how reliant on trade with China are African nations?

>forced Tajikistan to cede territory

Tajikstan ceded ~1300 sqkm to PRC a decade ago to settle border ratification deal from 2000s in which PRC ceded 28000 sqkm to Tajikstan. Some retarded western propaganda tried to tie this to a few billions of Tajik debt to PRC when the dispute settlement was made 10+ years before BRI was a thing.

>It's called debt-trap diplomacy

It's called Indian propaganda co-opted by west. Just like the Tajikstan claims. Poster child being Hambantota port which was India being butthurt after getting first dibs from Sri Lanka to develop port, but couldn't. Sri Lanka went to PRC after Canadian feasibility study, but the port was poorly run, hence selling 85% stake/99yr lease to China Merchant Ports in exchange for USD to service Sri Lanka's western debts that more qualifies as debt trap (~80% of foreign debt vs PRC ~10%), and seeing massive improvement in management and profitability.

More people, but significantly less users, and less intensive users. People in nigeria largely aren't charging electric cars, running laundry dryers, or have much industry that requires as much electricity as the industry in california and texas. In fact, I would guess that the electrical power consumption in Nigeria would be far less than either state, and the overall number of people wouldn't be as big of an impact. Any major infrastructure investments now would pay huge dividends to the people in the future. You don't plant trees because you need shade today, you plant trees because you need shade in 20 years, and that's what I think the goal is here, to prepare africa for a major technological and per capita consumption leap in the next two decades. If they start building today, with many partner countries, it'll prepare the region to succeed better.

The Southwest region is certainly geographically isolated; however California is doing its best to fight that with connections such as with the PNW, but those are long distance and California is still susceptible to power outages from a few weak links .

> For those interested, this is Latin for "I give, so that you may give [presumably in the future]".

Yes, apologies for not specifying it. About the topic, I guess that the chances to obtain cheap energy, which would be vital for further industrial development in the areas involved, could convince local leaders to not mess with the projects, also with the perspective of cashing in public political support when time comes.