ByAFP
May 6, 2026
The Lobito Corridor is meant to move minerals vital to the energy transition - Copyright AFP Phill Magakoe
François AUSSEILL
The Lobito Corridor mega-project linking three African countries is shifting from blueprint to proving ground in the global race for critical minerals.
Linking Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, it was pitched as the West’s answer to China’s dominance in African mining.
Backed by more than $2.7 billion in pledged investment, the corridor is meant to move copper and cobalt, vital to the energy transition. For now, it remains a work in progress.
– Rail at the core –
The project aims to develop rail infrastructure to transport large quantities of minerals extracted in southern DRC and northern Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito for shipment to global markets.
The governments involved and the European Union — the project’s largest foreign backer — also want the corridor to drive regional development through farmland projects, logistics hubs and workforce training.
The corridor’s backbone is the historic Benguela railway, which runs west to east from Lobito to the Congolese border.
Much of the line was destroyed during Angola’s 1975-2002 civil war and rebuilt by a Chinese company until 2019.
Three years later, a European consortium — Lobito Atlantic Railway, or LAR — won a 30‑year concession to operate the line, transport minerals and manage Lobito’s mineral terminal.
The Angolan rail system already links up with a line serving DRC’s mineral-rich Lualaba province and is meant eventually to extend to Haut‑Katanga and into northern Zambia.
– US, Europe and China –
For years, the Lobito Corridor was billed as the biggest US infrastructure investment in Africa.
A US government agency, the Development Finance Corporation, provided a roughly $550-million loan to LAR to upgrade the railway and scale up mineral transport.
Washington’s enthusiasm culminated in a late‑2024 visit to Lobito by President Joe Biden, a first for Angola after Barack Obama in 2015.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has clouded the picture. While he has openly coveted critical minerals, he has also favoured bilateral deals over large, multilateral ventures.
Europe has stepped firmly into the lead. Through the EU, its member states, the European Investment Bank and private companies, it has committed about 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) to the project.
Just over a third is direct development aid, the EU’s ambassador to Angola, Rosario Bento Pais, told AFP in Luanda.
“We don’t want it to be just a transport corridor. We want it to be an economic development corridor that exactly will embrace all the development of the local economy and of the populations,” she said.
Although China lost its concession, Chinese mining firms are already using the corridor to move copper, LAR chief executive Nicholas Fournier said.
In late 2025, China signed a $1.4-billion agreement with Zambia and Tanzania to rehabilitate another line, the 1,800‑kilometre (1,120-mile) Tazara railway, securing long-term access to an Indian Ocean port for mineral imports.
– Why Lobito? –
Lobito, a port city of about 200,000 people some 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of Angola’s capital Luanda, sits at the western end of the Benguela line.
Its bay hosts a commercial port, oil and gas terminals and the mineral port. Naturally sheltered, it allows year‑round shipping.
Port capacity far exceeds current traffic, sharply reducing vessel waiting times and cutting costs for exporters.
– Missing link –
Zambia, Africa’s second‑largest copper producer, remains the corridor’s missing piece.
An old rail line links the country’s northern mining belt to Lubumbashi and Kolwezi in the DRC, but it requires a full overhaul — a project estimated at $4 billion and 10 to 15 years of work.
Zambia “remains very interested”, Pais said, but “the United States is no longer in the picture, at least for now.”
Working with partners such as the African Development Bank and Italy, the EU is exploring another option: upgrading a road from northern Zambia to the Angolan town of Luacano, where minerals could be loaded onto trains bound for Lobito.
– Risks –
A newly created intergovernmental agency must still prove it can smooth customs bottlenecks and regulatory hurdles.
Political uncertainty looms, with elections scheduled in Zambia in August and in Angola in 2027, raising the risk of policy shifts.
In April, torrential rains damaged sections of the Angolan railway, forcing LAR to rely temporarily on trucking while repairs were carried out.
Critics warn the project will be seen as just another chapter in the global scramble for Africa’s critical minerals unless it delivers tangible economic gains for communities in all three countries.
Africa’s Lobito Corridor chief tells AFP business, not geopolitics, drives strategy
ByAFP
May 6, 2026
Lobito Atlantic Railway CEO Nicholas Fournier says business takes precedence over geopolitics - Copyright AFP Phill Magakoe
François AUSSEILL
The chief executive of the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) project to link southern African mines to an Angolan export port says his priority is the business of the operation, not the geopolitical tussle over Africa’s minerals.
LAR holds a 30-year concession to operate the Benguela railway, a key artery of the planned Lobito Corridor linking Angola to the mining belt of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a longer-term ambition to connect to Zambia.
Western governments have promoted the corridor as an alternative export route for critical minerals at a time when China dominates much of the region’s mining and processing capacity.
But chief executive Nicholas Fournier told AFP in an interview in the port city of Lobito that his priorities are operational.
Around 70 percent of mines in the DRC are Chinese-owned and some are already using the line to ship copper and receive sulphur, which is used in copper processing, Fournier said.
End buyers, he said, are spread across regions.
“They are in the Americas, in Europe or in Asia,” Fournier said. “So we are totally apolitical.”
The company is owned by a consortium led by commodities trader Trafigura and Portuguese construction firm Mota-Engil, each holding 49.5 percent.
Belgian private rail operator Vecturis owns the remaining one percent.
Financing includes a loan of more than $500 million from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), fuelling perceptions of Western backing.
“It is indeed a loan and we pay interest on it,” Fournier said.
– High demand –
LAR began operations in 2023 and is responsible for freight traffic on the Angolan section of the line, moving mining-related cargo as well as supplying fuel and gas to the country’s interior.
Passenger services are operated by Angola’s state-owned railway company Caminho de Ferro de Benguela (CFB).
Much of the route is single track and it only doubles at stations, where trains can pass each other, a constraint that limits traffic and makes timetable discipline critical.
“In 2025, we ran 5,000 trains in Angola,” Fournier said, adding that 90 percent were passenger trains and the rest freight for the domestic market and the DRC.
On the Congolese route, he said LAR can now run up to one “copper train” a day to Lobito and one “sulphur train” a day back toward the mines.
Copper accounts for the bulk of LAR’s Congolese freight. The metal is shipped as cathode plates in sealed containers, representing about 95 percent of the volume from the DRC.
LAR has also transported cobalt, packaged in one-tonne bags, and could carry other minerals either in bulk or packaged form.
“We receive a lot of proposals for manganese. For lithium, too. But for the moment, we are focusing on what is in highest demand: copper,” Fournier said.
– ‘Plan B’ –
Scaling up will require more work on the Congolese side of the border, he said.
The corridor’s economics would improve if trains could be lengthened from around 15 wagons to 25 and potentially to 50, but that depends on track condition and infrastructure.
LAR is supporting DRC’s state railway operator, SNCC, with expertise and a pre-financing mechanism to fund works on the track from the Angolan border to Kolwezi and on to Lubumbashi, the main city in the country’s copper belt.
“It will take time, but we are confident that within two years, we will have a continuous line from Lobito to Kolwezi,” Fournier said.
The Zambian segment of the Lobito Corridor — often described as the missing link — is not on LAR’s near-term agenda, he added, citing the scale and cost of rehabilitating the rail infrastructure.
“We have been approached for numerous discussions regarding a possible extension to Ndola in Zambia, but at present, it is not really on my radar.”
The interview came as Fournier was managing disruption from severe flooding in Angola’s Benguela province 10 days earlier that he said would require weeks of repair work.
“So we put a Plan B in place,” describing a 350-kilometre (220-mile) road haul before the cargo can be transferred back onto rail.
“Unfortunately, there’s no other way than using trucks in this type of situation.”
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