The East African quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on US worries about China’s military plans for Djibouti:
Chinese military aircraft with a range of 4,000km would be able to operate over large swathes of Africa and the Arabian peninsula from a base in Djibouti, observed J. Peter Pham, Director of the African programme at the Atlantic Council.
A Djibouti facility would be a logical link in the “string of pearls” Beijing is threading around the Indian Ocean, Mr Pham said. Beijing says its interests in gaining access to ports in the region are of a purely commercial nature.