The Lobito corridor connects the Copper Belt of Katanga and Zambia by rail to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic. An alternative route to China-controlled infrastructure. Since 2023, the United States and the European Union have heavily invested in this project to secure their critical mineral supplies – copper and cobalt. Behind the railway line lies a geopolitical battle: Beijing controls a considerable share of the mines that the corridor is supposed to unlock, and is not a passive spectator to this rebalancing.
An old railway line crosses southern Africa from east to west, from the heart of Katanga to the Atlantic. It connects the copper and cobalt mines of the Copper Belt to the Angolan port of Lobito. This is the Lobito corridor. And since 2023, it is one of the most strategically contested infrastructure projects in the world.
The railway line that forms the backbone of the corridor is not new. The Benguela Railway, which connects Lobito to the Congolese border by crossing Angola for over 1,300 kilometers, was built by the Portuguese between 1902 and 1929. It was used to export minerals from the colony to European markets. After Angolan independence in 1975 and the long civil war that ravaged the country until 2002, the line gradually deteriorated, partially destroyed, and abandoned in some sections.
China rehabilitated it. Between 2006 and 2014, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, China Railway 20th Bureau Group, rebuilt most of the line for $1.83 billion, financed by loans secured on Angolan oil. The line reopened but remained underutilized due to insufficient extensions to the Congolese and Zambian mines. This is where the current project comes in, with a radically different ambition.
The geography of an issue: The Copper Belt in the east concentrates most of the world’s copper reserves and a considerable share of global cobalt. Kolwezi, Lubumbashi, Ndola – these are the names of the major mines that supply batteries for electric vehicles, electricity transmission cables, and defense equipment. Without Congolese copper and Katangan cobalt, there is no energy transition as the West has planned.
The problem is evacuation. Today, most minerals extracted from the Copper Belt transit to the east, towards Tanzania and the port of Dar es Salaam, or south through Zambia and Zimbabwe to the South African ports of Durban and Beira. These routes are long, saturated, dependent on aging infrastructure. They also pass through countries where China has a strong presence: the TAZARA Line connecting Zambia to Dar es Salaam was built by Beijing in the 1970s, and China remains by far the largest investor in ports and railways in the entire region.
The Lobito corridor offers an alternative: a route to the west, to the Atlantic, to European and American markets without passing through Chinese infrastructure.
A geopolitical battle: This explains Western interest in this project. In September 2023, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, the United States, the European Union, and their partners announced a joint investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to finalize the corridor. The EU mobilizes its Global Gateway mechanism – the European response to China’s New Silk Roads – to finance the rehabilitation of the Congolese section and the Zambian extensions.
The stakes are high: to create a critical mineral supply chain that does not pass through China, does not depend on its transport companies, and is not subject to its commercial conditions. The Sino-American economic war, which is playing out in semiconductors and green technologies, also plays out in the African subsoil.
The actors and their calculations: Angola plays a central and paradoxical role. As an oil-producing country in declining production, it seeks to diversify its economy and break free from Chinese influence that dominated the post-civil war reconstruction. President João Lourenço, in power since 2017, has pursued a policy of balancing towards the West. The Lobito corridor is the instrument of this pivot: it makes Lobito a regional hub, generates transit revenues, and attracts non-Chinese foreign investments.
The DRC is in a more complex position. It is geographically indispensable to the corridor – its subsoil contains the resources to be evacuated – but it is also the country where Chinese companies are deeply entrenched in the mining sector. Companies like CMOC, which operates the Tenke Fungurume mine, control a considerable part of the production. The Tshisekedi government plays on all fronts, accepting Western funding for infrastructure while maintaining mining contracts with Beijing.
The DRC and Zambia are important to this new route. Zambia, coming out of a severe debt crisis that led to debt restructuring – notably with Chinese creditors – between 2020 and 2023. It has every interest in diversifying its export outlets and not depending exclusively on routes controlled by Beijing.
What the map does not show: The Congolese section crosses active conflict zones: northern Katanga and neighboring regions remain unstable, with armed groups extorting convoys and infrastructure regularly sabotaged. The Congolese governance of the mining sector is notoriously weak. And China is not a passive spectator: its companies control a share of the mines that the corridor is supposed to unlock, giving it considerable leverage over the actual flow of minerals.
There is also the issue of deadlines. African infrastructure projects have a tendency to accumulate delays. The Lobito corridor is announced to be operational along its entire route by 2028. This is optimistic.
But the stakes are massive enough for Western countries to maintain their commitment. Without secured Congolese cobalt, there are no batteries for European and American electric vehicles. Without Zambian and Katangan copper, there are no electric infrastructures for the energy transition. The Lobito corridor is not just an African railway project. It is an element of the 21st-century resource war.
Source of cartography: AFP / USGS, European Commission, Lobito Corridor, Natural Earth, May 15, 2026.
