Nairobi, Feb. 11 -- Kenya has turned to Japan to support its infrastructure ambitions, opening up for Tokyo to tap into public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a way of reducing the load of debt owed to external lenders.

This week, President William Ruto made an official visit to Japan, which State House inaccurately labelled a state visit and confirmed that PPPs would be central to the discussions.

Some governments adopt PPPs to avoid debt by inviting investors to fund projects and then recoup their money by charging users of the facility before handing it over to the government. One such PPP is the Nairobi Expressway built by the Chinese. The model usually works well where the demand to use the facility is high.

After a series of talks...