The Lobito Corridor
The Lobito Corridor is a railway, and so far only the old line carries its freight.
- 34
- projects on the corridor: 3 in service, 7 being built or under way, 12 approved, 12 announced
- USD 1.96 bn
- signed or disbursing: loans, grants and equity with an agreement behind them
- USD 689 m
- approved by a board but not yet signed
- USD 1.69 bn
- pledged or announced for named projects; 13 more lines carry no amount
The Benguela line runs 1,289 km from Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito to Luau on the Congolese border; since January 2024 a concession of Trafigura, Mota-Engil and Vecturis has run it, and from 2024 its trains have gone on along the DR Congo's own line to the copper and cobalt mines of Kolwezi. Around it, Washington, Brussels, Rome and the development banks have gathered roads, border posts, farms, power and studies under the corridor's name.
The largest signed loan is the US Development Finance Corporation's USD 553 m to the railway, announced by Joe Biden and signed under Donald Trump. The headline figures are of another order: more than USD 4 bn of US investment, more than EUR 2 bn from Team Europe. They count private money and each other, and USD 2.65 bn of what the United States listed under the corridor's name is meant for things away from it, mostly solar power elsewhere in Angola: about as much as everything signed or approved for the corridor's own projects.
The next pieces are on paper. The DR Congo signed its line from Dilolo to Sakania to Mota-Engil in August 2026, with no loan yet for the works. The new railway into Zambia has the African Development Bank's approval and, since 27 October, preferred builders (Webuild, Mota-Engil and İçtaş for the Zambian section) but no signed contract; its developer, the Africa Finance Corporation, aims to close its financing at the end of 2027.
Register compiled 12 Oct 2026, checked against its sources 30 Oct 2026 · 34 projects · 54 financing lines from 25 funders · 79 sources, each linked · railways from OpenStreetMap, fetched 12 Oct 2026