Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo – From the Port of Lobito in Angola, along Africa’s Atlantic coast, runs a 1,300-km (800-mile) stretch of railway that runs through neighboring Zambia and the resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In the 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 such as cobalt and copper, giving it its fair share of international attention in recent years.
In early December, on the sidelines of a visit to Angola, the President of the United States Joe Biden held talks with some of his African counterparts on the Lobito infrastructure project – a multi-country agreement aimed at developing the connection between the Atlantic and Indian oceans and provide faster access to Africa’s minerals for American and European markets.
But in Congolese towns and cities along the regions to be linked by the rail 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 useful trade hub between African countries, others fear it is merely a gateway to facilitate further plunder of the region’s natural resources.
Claude Banza lives in the town of Kolwezi in Lualaba, one of the key points along the Corridor road, which hosts large mines that human rights groups have called out for human rights abuses.
“We live a miserable life, we have no jobs,” Banza told Al Jazeera.
“This Lobito project is a savior for us,” he said, hoping that infrastructure developments can help bring more opportunities and hope to local communities.
“Since the president has said that many jobs will be created, we hope to have the tools to face life’s challenges,” he said.
The project will create around 30,000 direct and indirect jobs and help reduce poverty in the DRC, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said in Angola last month.
He was speaking in the town of Benguela near the port of Lobito, alongside Biden, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, Angolan President Joao Lourenco and Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango. A proposed eastward extension of the Corridor from Zambia to Dar-es-Salaam would allow the project to reach the Indian Ocean.
The development of the Corridor is a “project 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 peers. citizens”.
However, many in the DRC disagree.
“It’s neo-colonialist”
The project is “pharaonic”, Dady Saleh, a Congolese economic analyst, told Al Jazeera.
While he recognizes its overall economic potential, he said he regrets that the countries where this infrastructure project will take place will only benefit from the “crumbs” – pointing to potential risks ahead for the DRC in particular.
“This project is an organized sale of the region’s natural resources to a capitalist system,” Saleh said. “And especially in the case of the DRC, the Congolese will be like commission agents. We have opened our economic market to modern robbers.”
Many others on the front lines of the mining economy feel similarly.
Souverain Kabika lives in the Haut-Katanga province, another Congolese region connected by the railway line to Lobito. He works as a copper handler on trucks that transport ore to the port of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and out to the Indian Ocean.
But now, with the project growing, he fears what little work he once had will dry up as truck traffic along nearby roads will be significantly depleted in favor of rail.
“This project is likely to threaten even the small activities we carried out. At one point I was loading the trucks to take the goods to Matadi. This corridor could leave me without a job”, he fears.
Analyst Saleh said the DRC is the country with the most at the table in this giant project and thinks the government should open its eyes before signing the dotted line with the countries that will benefit the most from the deal.
“The DRC should not sign this contract and (should) renegotiate it because it is neo-colonialist,” Saleh said, arguing that the actions of some African leaders risk returning their countries to “the old days, when the railways were created to facilitate the transportation of our raw materials by the colonialists”.
He encourages the Congolese government to make efforts to develop a “complete industrial system”, also criticizing the fact that the US invests far more in Angola than in the DRC.
Civil society groups in Lualaba province, considered the cobalt capital of the world, are also against the project.
Lambert Menda, the provincial coordinator of Congo’s New Civil Society, a network of organizations, laments the fact that for several decades the DRC’s natural resources have benefited more foreigners than Congolese.
He asks that this time the local communities be at the center of this project that aims to export the country’s minerals through the Corridor.
“We want to see wealth in our communities. We don’t want to export any more minerals, because the importer will earn more than us,” said Menda. “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 pass from Kolwezi to the ports of Durban in South Africa or Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to reach the London-based metals market.
It takes a long time and involves a lot of logistical resources, analysts say.
Serges Isuzu, an economic analyst based in Kolwezi, believes that the Lobito Corridor will only reduce transport costs.
“With the Lobito Corridor, raw material transporters will be able to cover roughly 1,600 kilometers (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 pointed to the gains already made, saying a copper shipment from Africa to the US that would previously have taken more than a month now arrives in days. “It’s a game changer,” the US president said.
The DRC will be connected to the Corridor through provinces that are known for raw materials, making them important in the global energy transition.
These provinces – Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga – owe a large part of their income to the flourishing mining activities carried on there. However, the benefits are not visible in the daily life of the local population.
Even if some progress is reported in terms of local development, much needs to be done for people’s lives to be “significantly affected”, analysts familiar with the areas said.
According to recent World Bank estimates, about 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 vast deposits of major metals and minerals, residents of the DRC’s mining provinces are far from prosperous. Most struggle to make ends meet, living in desperation and insecurity as the vast wealth around them is stripped away, rights groups have noted.
An October 2024 United Nations policy paper (PDF) on the regional impact of the Lobito Corridor also listed potential future challenges, including environmental impact, land and community conflicts, and health, gender and human rights risks. to man.
It also urged the three governments and other stakeholders to establish processes to “address negative human rights impacts and abuses, including any cross-border business-related human rights abuses, resulting from the Lobito Corridor.” .
A ‘wrong way’?
Despite the challenges and hesitations of many locals, Congolese President Tshisekedi remains optimistic about the future of the Lobito project.
“For the DRC, the Corridor represents a strategic opportunity to increase 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 that he believes some countries rich in strategic mineral resources, such as the DRC, will be the main beneficiaries of the energy transition if the right policies are put in place.
According to the climate finance specialist, these countries will be able to negotiate with foreign powers for their minerals, which will be in high demand on the market by 2035 as part of the energy transition.
However, Congolese analyst Saleh believes that by the US and its partners blowing up “leonine” contracts in Africa – where he says all the costs are borne by one side while the other gets all the benefits – they are “mortgaging” a hope that many Congolese fantasize about.
“We are in the process of burying that hope with the Lobito project,” he said. “We boast of strategic minerals that have already been sold by the Chinese, Canadians and others. For example, we are told that this corridor will create 30 thousand jobs, very little. A project like this should create more than a million decent jobs.”
Saleh encourages governments like the DRC’s to adopt a “neo-mercantile” system so that Africans can fully enjoy their natural resources.
“Countries like the USA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have benefited today from their natural wealth. We, on the other hand, are not even able to transform them at home, and that is a pity,” he complained.
Menda, from the New Civil Society, emphasized 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 by rail to Lobito will benefit Angola, the country through which our ores will pass, and the importing countries – not us, the local communities Congolese,” he said.
Beyond local economic losses, Saleh also fears 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, creating links with the unstable security situation in the east of the DRC. , where the Congolese authorities are trying to restore peace after mineral looting and an armed rebellion.
“The Lobito project has detrimental security effects on our country,” he said. “The Americans have not given us any gifts; they can do anything to control our minerals, while the DRC risks not being safe.”
