Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo – From the Port of Lobito in Angola, along Africa’s Atlantic coast, runs a 1,300km (800-mile) stretch of railway that passes through neighbouring Zambia and resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
In DRC, the Lobito Corridor links the mining provinces of Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga – home to some of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals like cobalt and copper, earning it a fair share of international attention in recent years.
In early December, on the sidelines of a visit to Angola, United States President Joe Biden held talks with some of his African counterparts on the Lobito infrastructure project – a multi-country agreement that aims to develop connectivity between the Atlantic and Indian oceans and provide speedier access to Africa’s minerals for the US and European markets.
But in Congolese towns and cities along the regions to be connected to the railway project, there are mixed feelings and simmering fears.
The DRC has the world’s largest cobalt reserves and its seventh-largest copper reserves.
While some Congolese believe the Lobito project will be a beneficial trade hub between African countries, others fear it is merely a gateway to facilitate the further plundering of the region’s natural resources.
Claude Banza lives in the city of Kolwezi in Lualaba, one of the key points along the Corridor’s route, which hosts vast mines that rights groups have called out for human rights abuses.
“We lead a life of misery, we have no jobs,” Banza told Al Jazeera.
“This Lobito project is a lifesaver for us,” he said, hoping the infrastructure developments can help bring more opportunities and hope for local communities.
“As the president has said that many jobs will be created, we hope to have the means to face the challenges of life,” he said.
The project will see the creation of about 30,000 direct and indirect jobs and help reduce poverty in DRC, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said in Angola last month.
He was speaking in the city of Benguela near the Lobito port, alongside Biden, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, Angolan President Joao Lourenco and Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango. A proposed eastward expansion of the Corridor from Zambia to Dar-es-Salaam would allow the project to run all the way to the Indian Ocean.
The development of the Corridor is a “project that is full of hope for our countries and our region”, Tshisekedi said at the time, calling it “a unique opportunity for regional integration, economic transformation, and to improve the living conditions of our fellow citizens”.
However, many in the DRC disagree.
‘It is neo-colonialist’
The project is “pharaonic”, Dady Saleh, a Congolese economic analyst, told Al Jazeera.
Though he recognises its overall economic potential, he said he regrets that the countries where this infrastructure project will take place will only benefit from “crumbs” – pointing to potential dangers ahead specifically for the DRC.
“This project is an organised sell-off of the region’s natural resources in a capitalist system,” Saleh said. “And especially in the case of the DRC, the Congolese will be like commission agents. We’ve opened up our economic market to modern plunderers.”
Many others on the front lines of the mining economy feel similarly.
Souverain Kabika lives in Haut-Katanga province, another Congolese region connected through the railway line to Lobito. He works as a copper handler on the trucks that transport ore to the port of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and towards the Indian Ocean.
But now, with the growing project, he fears that the little work he used to have will dry up as truck traffic along nearby stretches of roads will deplete significantly in favour of the railway.
“This project is likely to threaten even the small activities we used to carry out. At one point, I was loading trucks to take goods to Matadi. This Corridor could leave me workless,” he fears.
Analyst Saleh said the DRC is the country with the most on the table in this giant project and feels the government should open its eyes before signing the dotted line with countries that will benefit more from the arrangement.
“The DRC should not sign this contract and [should] renegotiate it because it is neo-colonialist,” Saleh said, arguing that the actions of certain African leaders risk returning their countries to “the old days, when railroads were made to facilitate the transport of our raw materials by the colonialists”.
He encourages the Congolese government to make efforts to develop a “complete industrial system”, also castigating the fact that the US invests much more in Angola than in the DRC.
Civil society groups in Lualaba province, considered the cobalt capital of the world, are also opposed to the project.
Lambert Menda, the provincial coordinator of the New Civil Society of Congo, a network of organisations, deplores the fact that for several decades DRC’s natural resources have benefitted foreigners more than Congolese.
He demands that this time, local communities must be at the heart of this project that aims to export the country’s minerals via the Corridor.
“We want to see wealth in our communities. We don’t want to export minerals any more, because the importer will earn more than we do,” Menda said. “We want to see hospitals, schools and roads to make life easier for the locals.”
‘Game changer’
Raw materials from the various southern provinces of the DRC already transit from Kolwezi to the ports of Durban in South Africa or Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to reach the metals market based in London.
It takes a long time, and many logistical resources are involved, say analysts.
Serges Isuzu, an economic analyst based in Kolwezi, believes that the Lobito Corridor will only reduce transport costs.
“With the Lobito Corridor, raw materials transporters will be able to cover more or less 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) from Kolwezi in the DRC to Lobito in the Republic of Angola. And all this will be done in eight days, which is good,” he said.
Speaking in Angola last month, Biden remarked on the gains already being made, saying a shipment of copper from Africa to the US that would have previously taken more than a month now arrives in days. “It’s a game changer,” the US president said.
The DRC will be linked to the Corridor via provinces that are renowned for their raw materials, making them important in the global energy transition.
These provinces – Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga – owe much of their income to the flourishing mining activities that take place there. Yet the gains are not visible in the daily lives of local populations.
Even if some progress is reported in terms of local development, much must be done for people’s lives to be “significantly impacted”, analysts familiar with these areas said.
According to recent World Bank estimates, some 73 percent of Congolese live on less than $2.15 a day, making the DRC one of the poorest countries in the world.
Despite the country’s enormous deposits of key metals and minerals, the inhabitants of the DRC’s mining provinces are far from prosperous. Most struggle to make ends meet, living desperately and precariously as the vast wealth around them gets stripped away, rights groups have noted.
An October 2024 United Nations policy document (PDF) on the regional effect of the Lobito Corridor also listed potential future challenges, including the environmental effect, land and community conflicts, as well as health, gender and human rights-related risks.
It also urged the three governments and other stakeholders to put processes in place to “address adverse human rights impacts and abuses, including any cross-border business-related human rights harms resulting from the Lobito Corridor”.
A ‘wrong path’?
Despite the challenges and hesitations among many locals, Congolese President Tshisekedi remains optimistic about the future of the Lobito project.
“For the DRC, the Corridor represents a strategic opportunity to enhance the value of our natural resources, in particular copper and cobalt, which account for 70 percent of global demand as part of the energy transition,” he said alongside Biden and other leaders in Angola.
Fadhel Kaboub, an associate professor of economics at Denison University in the US, told Al Jazeera he believes certain countries rich in strategic mineral resources, such as the DRC, will be major beneficiaries of the energy transition if the right policies are defined.
According to the specialist in climate financing, “these countries should be negotiating deals for transfer of technology for high value-added green industrial policies to manufacture and deploy renewables, clean cooking, and clean public transportation in Africa and for Africa”.
Congolese analyst Saleh believes that by the US and its partners banging out “leonine” contracts in Africa – where he says the costs are all borne by one party while the other receives all the benefits – they are “mortgaging” a hope that many Congolese fantasise about.
“We are in the process of burying this hope with the Lobito project,” he said. “We boast about strategic minerals that have already been sold off by the Chinese, Canadians and others. For example, we are told that this Corridor will create 30,000 jobs, which is very few. A project like this should create more than one million decent jobs.”
Saleh encourages governments like the DRC’s to adopt a “neo-mercantile” system, so that Africans can enjoy their natural resources to the full.
“Countries like the USA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have taken advantage of their natural wealth today. We, on the other hand, are not even in a position to transform them at home, and that’s deplorable,” he lamented.
Menda, from the New Civil Society, stressed that the Lobito project is inappropriate for the Congolese nation. “We want local processing of our ores here in Lualaba, because transporting our ores to the intermediate state via the railway to Lobito will benefit Angola, the country through which our ores will transit, and the importing countries – not us, the local Congolese communities,” he said.
Beyond the local economic losses, Saleh also fears the security risks posed by the Lobito project.
According to his analysis, the DRC has taken a “wrong path” and through the Lobito project, the security of the southern region of the country will be “controlled” by Angola and the US, making links to the volatile security situation in eastern DRC, where Congolese authorities are struggling to restore peace following mineral looting and an armed rebellion.
“The Lobito project has harmful security effects on our country,” he said. “The Americans haven’t given us any gifts; they can do anything to control our minerals, while the DRC runs the risk of not being secure.”
