The rebuilding of the railways of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will be handled by the Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil SGPS SA. The work will form part of the Copper Rail Link, or Lobito Corridor, project, which is in time to become part of the Trans-African Railway now taking shape. One of its end points—the city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania—could become the point where the route joins the North–South Corridor.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has approved a partnership plan with Mota-Engil SGPS SA under a key project to build a railway for hauling copper and cobalt, Bloomberg reports. According to a statement by the DRC government, the Congolese section of the Lobito Corridor will undergo “full rehabilitation” in the course of the work. The reference is to an old railway running through the mining centers of Kolwezi, Tenke and Lubumbashi.
The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg writes that Mota-Engil and the DRC government are negotiating a contract that would let the Portuguese company operate the railway for 30 years. Mota-Engil is already part of the consortium that runs the rail line in neighboring Angola leading to the port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast.
Work is going on in parallel to connect neighboring Zambia to the Copper Rail Link. In October 2024 the governments of Angola and Zambia signed concession agreements with the Africa Finance Corporation, clearing the way for construction of a rail line between the two countries. The Zambia Lobito Rail project provides for an 800 km line through the northwestern provinces of Zambia, running from the town of Chingola to Luacano station on the Benguela Railway in Angola.
Chingola lies in Copperbelt Province and is a center of copper ore mining and copper production. The railway also links the town with Kapiri Mposhi, the westernmost point of the TAZARA line between Zambia and Tanzania. Once Zambia Lobito Rail is completed, therefore, there will be a direct rail route right across Africa, from Lobito in Angola on the Atlantic coast to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean.
TAZARA itself, however, built by Chinese specialists in the 1970s, is badly in need of modernization today. China, Tanzania and Zambia signed a preliminary agreement to carry it out in September 2024, at the China–Africa forum in Beijing.
Russia, too, has an interest in the creation of the Trans-African Railway. Connecting Tanzania to the International North–South Transport Corridor has been under active discussion for several years now. Maxim Reshetnikov, Minister of Economic Development, has spoken of plans to create a port logistics hub and a cargo base on the east coast of Africa as part of the INSTC. In the view of Alexander Karavaev, an expert at the Caspian Institute for Strategic Studies, this could become part of the federal project “Creation of Overseas Infrastructure,” which forms part of the updated national project “International Cooperation and Export.”
“Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s second capital, is the largest port on the east coast of Africa, home to the most important terminals for the export and import of farm produce, various ores and gold. The port also gives access to the transport networks of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Zambia,” Alexander Karavaev points out.
Dmitry Koptev
Read next content