The Cuban government has refused a request by the U.S. Embassy in Havana to allow it to import diesel for its generators while the Trump administration continues to impose a fuel blockade on the island, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Colonialism was a whole other thing, though, it wasn’t just a lack of sovereignty. There was forceful extraction of wealth going on, which is why India went from one of the richest places on Earth to a very poor nation over the period of British rule. There’s “neocolonialism” where rich nations get an unfair deal in more indirect ways, but the scale is just dramatically smaller, and at the Western end amounts to shaving off cents.
The thing with Chinese investments is they are happy to front the money sometimes, but eventually they call in their debt. Places in Africa are finding out about this the hard way right now. I also question if powering all of Cuba is really something even they could do in a span of weeks.
For the most part what’s happened is that China is not longer funding new and more Africa infrastructure. A lot of this is due to the infrastructure having now been built, and the economic benefits from said infrastructure being used to pay the loans back. As intended.
They utilize I think 20% solar currently, but the problem is also storage for nighttime power consumption. Even if they could generate 100% during the day they also need the infrastructure to store or generate for nighttime.