‘No geopolitics involved’: Angola rail project not aimed at countering China, CEO says
The US has framed it as key to de-risking from China, but Nicholas Fournier says Lobito Atlantic Railway is ‘a purely commercial entity’
LAR has strong commercial ties to China and serves as an important logistics provider for Chinese-owned mining companies while relying on Chinese manufacturing for its equipment, according to Fournier.
There is also a planned greenfield railway link to Zambia and eventually to Tanzania, creating a cross-continental railway connecting the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as announced by US officials last year.
“We are a part of this corridor, but we are just one component,” Fournier said on Tuesday. “We are the logistics component, as we operate the rail and the port. There is no geopolitics involved whatsoever.”
The railway is a joint venture backed by European companies, including global commodities trader Trafigura, Portuguese construction group Mota-Engil, and Belgian railway operator Vecturis.
Fournier highlighted the company’s strong commercial ties to China, noting that Chinese-owned mining companies in the DR Congo were major clients and that a significant portion of the copper they transported was destined for ports in China.
“We are transporting copper from eight Chinese-owned assets in the Kolwezi region,” he said, adding that sulphur imported via the Port of Lobito and the railway had been sold to Chinese-owned solvent extraction and electrowinning plants in the DR Congo.
Fournier said LAR had purchased 1,570 containers from China for use on the railway and all the containers had arrived. He added that the company had a contract with Chinese rolling stock manufacturer CRRC to deliver 275 wagons from China, with 100 already delivered to Lobito.
LAR won a 30-year concession in 2022 to modernise, maintain, and operate the 1,300km rail line, which includes a dedicated minerals terminal at the Port of Lobito.
While China Railway 20th Bureau Group Corporation (CR20) financed and rehabilitated the Benguela railway and handed it over to Angola in 2014, a Chinese bid for the new concession was unsuccessful.
However, China indirectly holds a stake since its state-owned China Communications Construction Company has a 32.4 per cent share in Mota-Engil, a key partner in the LAR consortium.
LAR has a track access agreement with the DR Congo’s state-owned railway company, Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Congo (SNCC), to operate and upgrade the 450km section between Luau and Kolwezi. Trafigura and Mota-Engil are pre-financing SNCC with up to US$100 million in repairs.
According to Fournier, the journey from Kolwezi to the border at Dilolo now takes less than 30 hours, compared to four days just a few months ago. An alternative is for companies to truck cargo from Kolwezi to Durban in South Africa, Mozambique’s Beira port, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, or to Luanda - the Angolan capital.
“We are seeing more and more appetite for using our services because we are far more efficient and faster,” Fournier said.
“I have just done the journey myself. It took me five days to get from Kolwezi to Lobito, compared to the trucking time to all the other places, which can be in excess of 30 days.”
He projected that by the end of the year, LAR should be transporting one train per day in each direction, totalling 40,000 tonnes of cargo per month.
When then US president Joe Biden visited Angola last year, he showcased the corridor as a success for American investment, stating that the US had committed nearly US$4 billion across its length and had pledged an additional US$600 million.
He noted that the DR Congo had then shipped copper via the railway for transit to the United States, and that this trip, which used to take 45 days, now took less than 45 hours.
Despite initial fears that Biden’s successor Donald Trump would abandon the project, Washington has promised to continue with the Lobito Corridor’s development.
Fournier said that LAR was funded entirely by equity from its shareholders and was in the “final stages” of securing a loan of more than US$500 million from the Johannesburg-based Development Bank of Southern Africa and the US International Development Finance Corporation for upgrades in Angola.
He added that the company’s primary ties were with the governments of Angola and the DR Congo, as well as its European sponsors.
Nevertheless, the Lobito Corridor is part of a broader rivalry for control of central Africa’s mineral trade. China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation has committed US$1.4 billion for the rehabilitation of the Tazara railway, which links Zambia and Tanzania.
According to Joseph Cihunda, who teaches law at the University of Kinshasa, the Port of Lobito is “the only fast route for transporting critical minerals extracted in the DR Congo-Zambia Copperbelt region to the Atlantic Ocean”. Cihunda said China had “a long lead” in this area, having financed infrastructure in most East African states.
“This puts [China] in a favourable position with regard to the critical minerals found in eastern [DR Congo].”
Global uncertainties drive Chinese rush to African goldfields, despite the risks
Gold miners from China are also more vulnerable to the wave of killings and kidnappings than their Western counterparts, observers say
In Mali – one of Africa’s top gold producers – the Chinese embassy has repeatedly warned its citizens against operating gold mines in the country because of the worsening security situation.
The embassy’s most recent advisory, issued in late July, ordered Chinese gold mining companies to “immediately halt operations and production” and for gold miners to “evacuate the mining areas”.
The warning followed a series of attacks and kidnappings targeting gold miners, especially Chinese nationals, against the backdrop of a security situation that has been deteriorating since Mali’s 2020 military coup d’état.
This included an incident in May, when two Chinese citizens were kidnapped and their heavy machinery burned at a gold mining site about 100km (62 miles) southwest of Mali’s capital, Bamako.
