By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI (Reuters) -The China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) will invest $1.4 billion to upgrade the Tanzania-Zambia railway, the line’s operator said on Thursday, improving a key route for copper exports from central Africa.
The railway, widely known by its initials, TAZARA, also offers a way to bypass logistics bottlenecks in South Africa that have slowed copper and cobalt exports.
“The decision to grant a concession follows an in-depth evaluation of TAZARA’s challenges over the years, which necessitated urgent intervention,” TAZARA Authority CEO Bruno Ching’andu said in a statement.
China signed a deal to revive the 50-year-old TAZARA last year, as the United States was throwing its financial weight behind a rival transport corridor for minerals called Lobito, after an Angolan port.
Some $1 billion of CCECC’s investment will go towards the rehabilitation of the TAZARA’s rail tracks, while the balance will be used to purchase 32 new locomotives and 762 new wagons to boost capacity, Ching’andu said.
TAZARA released the statement on the sidelines of the Zambia International Mining and Energy Conference, where Ching’andu made a presentation to investors and executives.
The 30-year concession will be structured into three years of construction work and 27 years of operation and maintenance, Ching’andu said, adding that negotiations between both sides have not yet been completed.
Former President Joe Biden visited Lobito at the end of his term to highlight the $550 million U.S. loan for the corridor, which links mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic coast, but current President Donald Trump has not publicly indicated his plans for the project.
The Africa Finance Corporation, which also backs Lobito alongside commodities trader Trafigura and others, said the project will go forward regardless of U.S. involvement.
The CCECC investment in TAZARA is a significant boost to China’s lending to Africa, which hit a 20-year low in 2022 after peaking at $28.4 billion in 2016.
The country, which bankrolled more than $5 billion to construct a modern rail line in Kenya and secured some railway construction contracts in Nigeria, has adopted a more cautious approach to big-ticket lending to projects in Africa after some countries struggled to repay debt and Zambia and Ghana defaulted.
(Reporting by Duncan Miriri, editing by Libby George, Alex Richardson and Sharon Singleton)
