LUANDA — If hypocrisy needed a railway, it would be exactly like the Lobito Corridor. It is hailed as a symbol of Africa’s progress. In fact, it is a mirror of everything negative the continent endures: Chinese debt, Western opportunism, Congolese blood, Angola’s misgovernment, and a railway that connects foreign interests more effectively than it connects the peoples who live along it. Promising prosperity while offering the same old extract wearing a new flag.
Angola is hosting the 7th African Union-European Union Summit, and one of the key projects presented as evidence of the new partnership is the Lobito Corridor. Over the past year, Washington, Brussels, and some media outlets have portrayed the corridor as a seductive narrative suggesting a geopolitical resurgence, the West’s strategic response to China’s growing influence in Africa. President João Lorenzo echoes this view, touting it as a diplomatic victory and economic breakthrough. But this story collapses under basic scrutiny.
Chinese project rebrands with Western cooperation
The heart of the Lobito Corridor is the Caminho de Ferro de Benguera (CFB), a 1,344-kilometer railway built by the Portuguese a century ago. Destroyed during Angolan’s civil war, it was completely rebuilt by China between 2006 and 2014 under the US$2 billion Railways to Oil program. Chinese engineers have restored stations, bridges and rolling stock, making Beijing’s biggest African rail project since the 1970s.
Follow us on WhatsApp | Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest headlines
In 2015, the presidents of Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia commissioned a rebuilt line at Luau, reopening a logistics artery that had been closed for 30 years. Since then, trains have intermittently brought copper and cobalt to Lobito. These achievements belong to China, not the United States or Europe.
Every kilometer of this railway was financed by oil-backed loans, which Angola continues to repay. The West’s “recovery” narrative conveniently ignores that Angolans are still paying off billions of dollars in Chinese debt for infrastructure improvements that the West claims as its own success story.
It wasn’t until 2023 that the United States and Europe rediscovered the corridor. President Biden’s 2024 visit saw pledges totaling US$4 billion under PGII, including for Zambia’s rail extension project, financing and technical assistance for the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) consortium. But these are promises, not infrastructure.
Even LAR is not entirely “Western”. One of its main companies, Mota-Engil, is 32.4% owned by China Communications Construction Company, which belongs to the Chinese state. Thus, even in the “new phase” of the Western world, Chinese capital is still embedded.
In reality, Western countries have not built the Lobito Corridor. The company offers management models, logistics optimization and governance frameworks, areas that remain influential because it lost the construction race long ago.
Here’s a slightly edited version:
“For the US, branding this corridor as Western-led provides the illusion of strategic coherence, but US funding will take time to materialize. For China, silence is enough and its infrastructure speaks for itself. Angola, on the other hand, risks becoming a pawn in its turf.”
Prosperity for whom?
The US and EU present the corridor as a source of prosperity for Angola, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But such optimism erases the cruel reality of the supposed beneficiary, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
How can we talk about shared prosperity when the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains locked in one of the world’s longest and bloodiest conflicts, caused by the very minerals transported along this railway? Neither the West nor China has shown any real interest in ending the war. They want minerals, not peace.
And what does this reveal about the AU-EU partnership?
If such partnerships fail to stabilize regions that supply essential minerals for their own industries, what practical impact does it have?
This leads to even more unpleasant questions.
Which African country has made real progress in human development over the past two decades, thanks largely to Western investment?
List is empty.
Western oil majors such as Chevron, Exxon, Total Energy, BP, and ENI extract vast amounts of wealth from Angola. However, the country remains mired in poverty, inequality and weak institutions. A similar lack of development applies to Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While China claims its infrastructure plans are a “win-win,” the long-term reality is far more grim. No African country owes more to Beijing than Angola. Angola has accumulated more than $46 billion in loans from China since 2000.
The West provides excerpts and advice.
Neither model was able to transform African society.
Angola’s internal failure: infrastructure without capacity
The Lobito Corridor’s potential is further undermined by Angola’s own governance crisis. President Lorenzo promised reforms, but continued to further centralize power and maintain an extractive economic order. Social services remain under-resourced, but the deeper problem is structural. In Angola, human capital is not produced because the education system suppresses critical thinking.
It’s not just a lack of funds. It’s intellectually empty.
People who are unable to question and innovate become hostages to foreign narratives and are unable to transform their economies.
The paralysis of Caminhos de Ferro de Luanda proves the point.
Another important domestic corridor, which was rebuilt at great expense, is now crippled due to mismanagement. If Angola cannot operate its own national railway, how can it expect the Lobito Corridor to bring real development?
And Angola does not yet have a national railway system. Benguela Railway (plays the Middle East axis). Luanda Railway (limited to the northwest corridor). and the Mocamedes Railway (limited to the southwest) are not interconnected.
A continent-sized country with three separate railway islands, unconnected from north to south and east to north, makes national mobility nearly impossible and promises of shared prosperity hollow. Angolans cannot move freely within their territory.
This fragmentation undermines claims of national integration and meaningful development. Praise in Washington and Brussels does not build a functioning state.
Beyond geopolitics: What will become of the corridor?
The Lobito Corridor could become more than a geopolitical trophy. If based on real reforms, Western aid could modernize operations, expand networks, diversify exports and support local processing. But this requires transparency, local investment, conflict-sensitive strategies and policies, and empowers Angolan entrepreneurs rather than foreign or domestic elites.
Conclusion: The real question
The Lobito Corridor is not a dispute between the United States and China. It is a mirror that reveals a harsher truth. Western countries claim what they did not build. China maintains long-term influence through its debt and the infrastructure it controls. And Angola is seeing development slip out of reach, constrained by its own state acquisition apparatus.
The question is not who laid the tracks or ran the trains.
From Lobito to Kolwezi to the war-scarred heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who will benefit the people along the railway line, and at what cost? Unless these questions are answered honestly, this corridor will remain just another mining route, another track on a map where world powers profit while African communities remain on the periphery.
