On 4 September – on the sidelines of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing – Tanzania, Zambia and China signed an agreement to modernise the bi-national Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority – known as Tazara – which links the Southern Africa Regional transport network to Eastern Africa’s seaport of Dar es Salaam.

Originally financed and built by China in the 1970s, the railway is one of Beijing’s most expensive development aid projects. It stretches 1,860km from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi in north-central Zambia and has transported more than 30 million tonnes of goods and more than 40 million passengers to date. But due to a lack of maintenance and investment, the infrastructure has fallen into disrepair.

Controlling critical minerals

The agreement signed between Xi Jinping, Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu and her Zambian counterpart Hakainde Hichilema – a deal that had been under negotiation for several months – concerns a loan of more than $1bn. More than 20 tunnels are to be dug and bridges built or repaired, to optimise the link between the Copperbelt, the copper-rich region of Zambia bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and one of the largest ports on the African continent’s east coast.

But the renovation of the Tazara is not merely a generous gift from China to its African partners. “China wants to secure its supply of minerals, that’s all that matters to Beijing,” explains Thierry Vircoulon of the Central and Southern Africa Observatory at the French Institute of International Relations. “To secure this supply, you need to own the mines, but also the transport. In a nutshell, it’s a battle between the US and China over control of Africa’s critical minerals.” These minerals – copper, cobalt, manganese and lithium – are key elements for the energy transition, essential to the production of electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines.

A blow for Beijing

Washington and Brussels, on the other hand, are betting everything on the Lobito corridor, the railway stretching 1,300km from Angola’s Atlantic coast to Kolwezi in the DRC. Operational since the 1930s, its history echoes that of its East African counterpart. In 1975, just as Angola had gained its independence, civil war broke out. When the conflict ended, more than a quarter of a century later, the Lobito infrastructure was in tatters. It was China that began rebuilding it in 2006.

The project was to be officially handed over in 2019, but in 2022, it was Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) – a consortium of Western companies made up of commodities trader Trafigura (49.5%), constructor Mota-Engil (49.5%) and rail operator Vecturis (1%) – which beat off the Chinese and won the concession for this strategic corridor.

“All observers agreed that the Chinese could not miss out, given their heavy involvement in Angola’s reconstruction and the size of the country’s debt to China,” Daniel Ribant, author of L’Angola de A à Z (“Angola from A to Z”), told The Africa Report at the time. “Against a backdrop of over-indebtedness, Luanda’s decision was seen as a retaliatory measure against China,” according to Vircoulon. “Nevertheless, it remains a cruel setback for Beijing,” he adds.

The concession was officially transferred in 2023, and this year LAR began exporting critical minerals to Europe and the US, but the West is still looking further afield. While trucks from Zambia and the DRC currently have to transfer their precious cargoes onto trains parked at the Angolan border, the railway is set to continue eastwards. Initially, it will run for some 400km between Luau and the Congolese town of Kolwezi. A rail network managed by the DRC’s national railway company already exists, but it requires heavy investment to reach full capacity. Trafigura has already announced an investment of $100m, while the US Agency for International Development Finance has released a $250m investment.

Funding delay

The Lobito corridor should eventually reach the north of Zambia. “As a first step, the US and the European Union will help governments launch pre-feasibility studies for the construction of the new Zambia-Lobito rail line, which will run from eastern Angola through northern Zambia,” announced Brussels and the White House in September 2023. One observer who prefers to remain anonymous added: “We’re talking about an investment of between $1.3bn and $3bn, but the financing is far from complete. We’re waiting for the European Union to put its hand in its pocket.”

In the battle to control these crucial corridors, thanks to Lobito the West is still one step ahead, even if, for the time being, the vast majority of minerals are still exported by truck to the ports of Dar es Salaam or Durban. But in the end, there may well be only one loser: South Africa. As Vircoulon points out: “This is the historic corridor. South Africa is about to lose a strategic position.”