Two Railroads, One Vision

Commentary by Judd Devermont

Published October 10, 2024

There has been a lot of talk lately about trains in southern Africa. Driven in part by the race for critical minerals, the United States and China are seemingly backing rival railroads to secure access to 70 percent of the world's cobalt, 12 percent of the world's copper, and significant reserves of chromium, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel. These external powers have committed billions of dollars to refurbish the U.S.- and G7-refinanced Benguela railroad (as part of the Lobito Corridor) and the Chinese-built Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railroad.

• The United States has mobilized over $4 billion to develop the Lobito Economic Corridor, including refurbishing Angola's preexisting 1,866 kilometer (km) Benguela rail line and supporting a new greenfield rail line expansion between the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia. The Lobito Atlantic Railway company, a joint venture involving Trafigura, Mota-Engil, and Vecturis SA, secured a 30-year concession in July 2023. In a break with the "pit to port" model, used by China and in past Western railroad projects, the United States is simultaneously financing clean energy projects, backing infrastructure investments, refocusing agriculture programs, and supporting mobile money initiatives, as well as working with the private sector, multilateral development banks, development finance institutions, and European partners.
  
• The People's Republic of China (PRC) has agreed to spend $1 billion to revitalize the 1,860 km TAZARA railway. President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding by his Zambian and Tanzanian counterparts at the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing in September 2024. TAZARA, built by Chinese laborers in the 1970s, once was a showpiece for China-Africa relations, but it has been poorly run and consistently underperforms. The China Civil Engineering Construction Corp (CCECC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), is still negotiating a concession to operate the railway for 30 years. If completed, CCECC will upgrade the track and deliver new locomotives to increase capacity and help shift more heavy cargo from roads to rail.
  

President Joe Biden's upcoming travel to Angola-recently postponed due to Hurricane Milton, but expected to be rescheduled for this fall-will mark his first trip to the region and the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to the southwestern African nation. He almost certainly will spend much of his time extolling U.S. investments in the Lobito Corridor. It is equally assured that the international media will cast the two railroads as lead actors in the drama of U.S.-Chinese strategic rivalry.

And yet, this framing is all wrong. The future of the Lobito and TAZARA is connection, not competition. The arguments for uniting these two rails are straightforward: it realizes a pan-African goal for a transcontinental transportation corridor, it reflects U.S. and Chinese contributions to both railways, and it promises to revive the region's economic fortunes.

The Case for Connection

The opportunity to connect Lobito and TAZARA is more real than it appears at first blush. At the 2023 G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, President Biden promised that "the rail line would extend from the western shores of Angola to the border of the DRC and Zambia, with the goal of ultimately reaching the Indian Ocean, connecting the continent east to west for the first time." This year Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted members of the Lobitor Corridor consortium for a high-level roundtable at the UN General Assembly, welcoming Tanzanian participation for the first time. Other U.S. officials have been more explicit about the potential connection between Lobito and TAZARA, explaining, "if we are given the opportunity to find a way to create some compatibility and an open access connectivity between the work that we're doing [and] in [TAZARA] and/or other existing rail lines, we're certainly going to do everything we can to pursue that."

Despite the heated rhetoric about strategic competition, linking these two railways is consonant with the U.S. approach to the PRC. In May 2022, Blinken underscored that "we'll compete with confidence; we'll cooperate wherever we can; we'll contest where we must." National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan this year reiterated the importance of finding space "to coordinate on issues where our interests overlapped" and "unlock cooperation on areas where our interests align." My own experiences as National Security Council special advisor for Africa strategy and senior director for African affairs from 2021 to 2024 attest to the appeal and logic of this approach. I found genuine enthusiasm for connecting these railways when speaking with the TAZARA board and other African government officials. Three reasons underpin the promise and potential of joining Lobito and TAZARA.

1. A Pan-African Project. The founding fathers of Angola, Tanzania, and Zambia all waxed eloquently about connecting to the rest of Africa via rail. They viewed their respective railways as political projects, assisting in the linkage and liberation of southern Africa. In 1975, Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda thundered that "every time there is a communication network between African countries, that is a step nearer to the end of our continent's balkanization." Even after China initiated negotiations with Tanzania and Zambia over TAZARA, Kaunda was quietly backing a proposal to build a new rail link from the Zambian Copperbelt to the port of Lobito. According to a declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment from September 1968, Kaunda was "interested in the Angola rail link because he wants as many alternative routes to the sea as possible." Importantly, CIA analysts stressed that Kaunda viewed the proposed rail as an addition to TAZARA, not as an alternative to it. Fast forward to 2024, and there is still an eagerness to realize this pan-African dream. Former TAZARA railway managing director Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika toldThe China in AfricaPodcast "I do believe that the railway connectivity ideas that have been talked about over the years are absolutely necessary. There should be a linkage from the Angolan coast through Congo to the Zambian Copperbelt, linking up to the Zambian Railways, linking up to [TAZARA] and Dar es Salaam, and also on reaching up midpoint from TAZARA to Lobito."
   
2. Dual Ownership. The current narrative that pits a U.S. rail against a Chinese one is factually wrong. Both countries have invested in both railroads. While TAZARA's origins had a Cold War dimension (with the U.S. government sponsoring a competing road between Tanzania and Zambia), the United States eventually warmed to the railroad and came to its rescue. By the 1980s, TAZARA had fallen into disrepair. A New York Times article bemoaned that "the cars are dirty; toilets do not flush. The Tanzanians have not maintained the tracks and trains are out of service for days and weeks at a time." Consequently, the U.S. Agency for International Development provided a grant of $47.5 million to purchase spare parts and 17 new diesel engines, bringing the total number of high-powered locomotives to 28. Similarly, the Benguela railway, built by the Portuguese in the early 1900s, was rendered nearly nonfunctional during the Angolan civil war. According to the Washington Post, it became "a favorite target for the guerrillas, and [National Union for the Total Independence of Angola leader Jonas] Savimbi claims that they have kept the railroad inoperative by blowing up bridges and other sabotage since 1976." After the civil war ended, CRCC reconstructed Benguela between 2006 and 2014 at a cost of $1.83 billion.
   
3. Economic Viability. Both railways have never realized their full economic potential. TAZARA recorded its peak performance in 1977-1978 when it transported 1.27 million tons of cargo. However, by November 2023, the TAZARA Board of Directors reported that it only shipped 324,903 tons. Benguela reached its apex in 1973 when it transported 3.3 million tons of cargo. This banner year was quickly followed by a steep decline due to the war and then limited and episodic output during the past two decades. The answer, therefore, should be integration, not continued fragmentation. Indeed, the CIA in 1985 assessed that the transportation network in southern Africa could function, as a single, integrated system, noting "these lines are almost all the same gauge, rolling stock would be interchangeable so that any rail that is short of locomotives or freight cars could lease the needed equipment from neighboring lines." Cobus Van Staden makes a similar point, positing that linking Lobito Corridor to the TAZARA line is cost-efficient because Lobito's planned expansion to Chingola, DRC, is only some 115 km away from the TAZARA station in Ndola, Zambia. The benefits, moreover, are significant: reducing the travel time of goods across the continent and tightening links between global markets. The potential to move cargo from, say, Mumbai, to Rio de Janeiro or New York in fewer days and to the benefit of African transit countries is very alluring. Indeed, Secretary Blinken last month marveled that "it used to be that it took up to 45 days to get shipments to port by truck. Now, just a fraction of that time by train."
   

Signposts for Unification

If there is ever a tie-up between Lobito and TAZARA, African, U.S., and Chinese officials will have to put aside their egos and enmities, as well as address longstanding issues of government ineptitude and corruption, to make it work.

• African Leadership. Angolans, Congolese, Tanzanians, and Zambians will need to signal that a Lobito-TAZARA connection is their preferred option. The African Union often touts its African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network which includes both Lobito and TAZARA as key nodes. It seems reasonable that the Southern African Development Community and its member states, which includes all four countries, would support this initiative, especially if it builds on Zambia and the DRC's intent to process the raw materials locally. In addition, there needs to be a concerted effort to address the governance challenges, including corruption, that have long hindered TAZARA's effectiveness.
  
• U.S. Support. The United States has already hinted at its openness to linking the two rails, but it could do more to advance this agenda. First, President Biden should voice his personal support for this ambitious goal when he reschedules his trip to Angola. Second, the U.S. government should leverage the new Millennium Challenge Corporation threshold program in Tanzania to address any policy or legislative hurdles. Third, it should open several U.S. programs to African countries, including the Inflation Reduction Act and Minerals Security Partnership. It also should grant eligibility to more countries, in addition to Kenya, for the Chips and Science Act to support local processing, as it is already doing with nickel in Tanzania.
  
• Chinese Acquiescence. The PRC is the most likely spoiler to this arrangement, but it is in everyone's interest to have cargo move in both directions. After all, according to IHS Markit's global mining market analysis models, 80 percent of the minerals extracted from the DRC and Zambia will be transported via the Lobito Corridor by 2030, as it provides the shortest route between the Katanga mining region in the DRC, the Copperbelt in Zambia, and a deep-water seaport. The CCECC would have to agree to open access, which means refraining from discriminatory practices, including prebooking cargo, to prevent other companies or countries from using TAZARA. Even though much of the refinery capacity is in the Middle East and East Asia, Chinese firms already are using the Lobito Corridor because other routes, such as through the port of Durban route, are less efficient. In fact, Lobito Atlantic Railway's first customer was a joint venture between Chinese Zijin Mining and Ivanhoe Mines.
  

A New Golden Spike

On May 10, 1869, a jubilant ceremony marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States, connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha with a golden spike. The united railroad revolutionized transportation and positively contributed to the economy, powering the growth of the iron, steel, and coal industries, as well as the manufacturing of locomotives and railcars. A similar phenomenon is possible in southern Africa. By linking Lobito and TAZARA, there is the potential to realize the long-deferred pan-African dream of a transcontinental transportation and economic corridor that benefits Africans and their external partners alike.

Judd Devermont is a senior adviser (non-resident) with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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