Abuja, 03/JUL/2023
Lobito Corridor, the largest railway, port, airport and road infrastructure complex, will be awarded this Tuesday, July 4th, to a consortium of investors to explore and modernize the strategic and logistical services of the Benguela Railway.
The concession ceremony taking place in the city of Lobito, Benguela Province, will be witnessed by the Presidents of Angola, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hakainde Hichilema of the Republic of Zambia.
The Lobito Corridor is the most efficient gateway for DRC and Zambia to access the sea for the exportation of their minerals. The Angolan State invested US$3.2 billion, of which US$1.9 billion were in infrastructural development and expansion of the Lobito Port and US$1.2 billion in the construction of terminals and logistics centers to create more capacity for Benguela Railway.
“It is an inter and multimodal freight transport solution for the DRC and Zambia, which implies an overall lower cost than the main existing alternatives in the region”, explained Transport Minister Ricardo d´Abreu.
CONSORTIUM OF INVESTORS
The Private Investor Consortium comprisesVecturis, Trafigura and Mota Engil companies, which in the first five years plans to transport three million tons of different cargos and increase to ten million in the next ten years of activity.
The concession contract for the Lobito Corridor is for a period of 30 years, becoming a milestone for the development and optimization of the railway transport and logistics sector.
The consortium has available USD 500 million to invest in all assets granted with the operation and maintenance of rail freight transport and the maintenance of infrastructure along its 1,330 kilometers stretch.
The main objective is to transport processed and unprocessed mineral products from the Copperbelt region, downstream (Luau/Lobito) for exportation to the international market; the transport of refined petroleum derivatives (diesel and gasoline) in the upward direction (Lobito/Luau) to meet the import needs of Zambia and the DRC, as well as the transportation of general cargos and containers to the main points of commercial exchange.
POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES IN THE CORRIDOR
The challenges of the Lobito Corridor are based on a combined population of over 140 million (Angola, DRC and Zambia), representing more than 40% of SADC sub-region.
Its potential could boost the global GDP of the three countries by around 177 billion dollars corresponding to 25% of the Member States ofthe Southern African Development Community – SADC.
This initiative will have a greater impact on the populations living along the Lobito Corridor in Angola (Benguela, Huambo, Bié and Moxico), in the DRC (Kolwezi, Likasi and Lubumbashi) and Zambia (Solwezi, Kitwe and Ndola).
The three countries have already created a Lobito Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency, as a management instrument with harmonized laws, policies, regulations and systems whish include development infrastructural in line with the SADC Protocols Treaty.
The railway line that connects Lobito (Atlantic Coast) to Luau is the longest in Angola with a length of 1,330 km. The reactivation of the Lobito Corridor will improve regional integration and the commitments of the Southern sub-region with the possibility of future Atlantic-Indian interconnection, with rail connection to the Portsof Dar-es-Salam, in Tanzania and Beira, in Mozambique .
