Global demand for electric cars, AI-driven technology, and green power generation means rare earths and critical minerals are becoming strategic assets, and more sought after than ever. This puts resource-rich Africa at the centre of this new gold rush.
Transporting valuable resources from their point of origin, through the ports of Africa, and onwards to their final destination is complex. Optimising this export process by making it faster and more efficient is essential to capitalise on this growing worldwide demand for Africa’s resources. The Lobito Corridor in Sub-Saharan Africa, a vital transport network within the continental network, does exactly that.
The corridor is a transport and logistics megaproject that centres on infrastructure that facilitates the movement of natural resources for export. It connects the mineral-rich, resource-producing nations of Zambia, DRC and Angola with the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast, from which products are exported to global markets.
Beyond the key elements of hard infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and railways, the project has also established commercial networks and value chains and helped develop regional regulatory and trade policies to promote long-term growth.
Rail systems for export have existed in this region since the early 1900’s, though they were disrupted at the onset of the Angolan Civil War in 1975. China then provided a loan to kickstart the rehabilitation of the railway in 2006. But it is the major investments provided by the United States and the European Union (EU) and G7 partners since 2023 that have been the lifeblood of the rapidly expanding project.
America alone has invested four billion dollars into the Lobito Corridor, according to the US Embassy in Tanzania. With investments from the EU and other partners, the total investment into the project has now exceeded six billion dollars.
Indications suggest a coming commodity boom over the next decade, one in which Africa will benefit. In some ways, this boom is actually happening now; consider, for example, America’s increase in transactional but transparent dealmaking with resource-rich nations like the DRC for critical minerals.
The Lobito Corridor figuratively and literally faces west to the huge markets of the Americas and elsewhere, which are all seeking their fill of Africa’s strategic resources. This geographical and political orientation gives the countries through which the corridor travels a closer link to these vast buyer markets and the opportunities they hold.
African policymakers need to ensure their approach towards the future extraction boom and export of minerals does not repeat the mistakes of the past, wrote Ken Opalo, the Kenyan political scientist, recently. This will allow African nations to harness the true value inherent in their natural resources, and to harness this true value, there must be infrastructure systems in place to ensure benefit for each element of the value chain.
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This means each country, region, community (as well as the natural environment) involved in the extraction and export of resources must benefit. Managing this expected boom in commodity demand effectively and equitably requires infrastructure such as the Lobito Corridor to facilitate it.
Previously, a nation or region might have had to passively sit by whilst their natural resources were exported without any value filtering down from a few key players. The resources themselves undertook torturous export routes on poorly designed infrastructure, a time-consuming process that constantly drives up cost.
An inefficient system does not attract investment. This leaves no margins for reinvestment into struggling systems and no space for investment into human capital and future talent. Such systems condemn host nations to an annual cycle of poorly optimised returns. They also make more efficient systems elsewhere, a more attractive prospect for outside investment. The Lobito Corridor is changing the transport component within these systems, mile by mile and tonne by tonne.
At the 2026 Mining Indaba in Johannesburg in February, the Ministers of several African countries central to the export of critical minerals reminded partners that the African extractive sector is evolving. African countries are taking on increasing responsibility for transporting, refining and processing strategic natural resources before they are exported. There has also been increased agency from countries holding global partners to account for environmental damage, such as Zambia has done with the Chinese Government over the Kafue mine disaster in Zambia. The development of the Lobito Corridor is essential to realising these ambitions. It helps African nations retain and protect the value of their resources, whilst connecting them more efficiently to global markets.
Finally, where there is one, others will follow. A recent report by the Atlantic Council, following the 2026 Mining Indaba, suggests four more regions in Africa where the strategy of the Lobito Corridor could be replicated. These are the Nacala Corridor, which connects Zambia to Malawi and Mozambique, the Liberty Corridor connecting Guinea to Liberia, and the Northern Corridor, which connects Mombasa to landlocked East African states. Morocco’s growing status as a mineral processing zone means it too is ranked among this new generation of logistics networks and hubs.
The report concludes by stressing that the Lobito Corridor is not a ‘one-off trophy project’ but a replicable formula that can help America and other partners secure their supply chains of critical minerals whilst attracting inward investment for Africa.
The results of this ambitious initiative are showing already – according to Ivanhoe Mining, in 2023, the first shipment of copper from the DRC arrived in Lobito in only eight days – cutting the ordinary transit time by two-thirds.
James Mbugua is editor of the Nairobi Law Monthly.
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