Once up and running, the corridor will stretch 1,600km (1,000 miles) westward through mineral-rich Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to create a logistics corridor to the Atlantic port of Lobito in neighbouring Angola.
The United States sees it as a direct rival to the China-backed 1,860km Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara), which stretches eastward from Kapiri Mposhi in central Zambia to Dar es Salaam on Tanzania’s eastern coast.
But for the African governments involved, the corridor is less about geopolitical sway and more about the need to create a seamless transcontinental connection – officials in Luanda, Kinshasa, and Lusaka are pursuing “interoperability” to link the Atlantic port of Lobito with the Indian Ocean at Dar es Salaam and Mozambican ports.
Speaking in Nairobi on the sidelines of a summit on African infrastructure in late April, Kafuta Mulemba of the intergovernmental Lobito Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency said that while global powers such as the US and China vied for influence in a region rich in critical minerals, the agency would keep prioritising the economic ambitions of its member states.
“You should remember that these assets are state-owned,” Mulemba said. “We do not look at it from a perspective of whether it is Chinese or American. Geopolitics remains geopolitics, but our priority is ensuring inter-regional trade.”
