How Africa can turn split mineral belts into regional value chains

Reducing dependence on longer paths through South and East African ports

- 

Angola, the DRC and Zambia have positioned the Lobito Corridor as a flagship westward route for copper and cobalt exports.

(Graphic: Russell Benjamin)

In 2023, a mine operating along the Central African Copperbelt moved its first test consignment through the Lobito Corridor, using the refurbished rail spine that links the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Angola's Atlantic coast.

Roughly 1100 tonnes of copper concentrate from the Kamoa-Kakula complex in Kolwezi were loaded at the Impala Terminals facility and sent west by rail to the Port of Lobito. The journey took eight days.

Until this trial run, more than nine-tenths of the mine's output had been routed through Durban or Dar es Salaam, where a single turnaround typically stretched to six weeks.

Angola, the DRC, and Zambia have positioned the corridor as a flagship, with financial and political backing from the US, Italy, the EU, and a coalition of multilateral financiers under the G7's Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and the EU's Global Gateway.

The goal is to create an alternative westward route for copper and cobalt exports, reducing dependence on longer paths through South African and East African ports, lowering transport times, and de-risking supply for battery and clean-energy manufacturers.

Seen from within the continent, though, Lobito matters for another reason.

It shows how a corridor can become the organising unit of industrial strategy, because the infrastructure that moves ore and the systems that govern its movement naturally operate beyond national borders. It also forces a more fundamental question onto the table: if the next generation of global industry is going to draw on Africa's critical minerals, what scale of planning can genuinely support that opportunity?