Great power competition in the Central African copper belt is heating up as China, Tanzania, and Zambia agreed to move forward this week with the revitalization of a historic rail line.
On the sidelines of this week’s Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China, Tanzania, and Zambia signed a memorandum of understanding to revamp the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, also known as TAZARA.
Completed in the 1970s, TAZARA was China’s first major overseas construction project. It provided landlocked Zambia with access to Tanzania’s coast, bypassing then-white settler states Rhodesia and South Africa. TAZARA has since fallen into disrepair.
In February, China proposed rehabilitating the railway through a public-private partnership — an arrangement that is preferred by Beijing and African countries as an alternative to debt-driven development.
Zambia defaulted on its external debt in 2020 during the COVID pandemic and remains a debt-distressed country. But it is receiving growing attention from great powers due to its abundance of copper — a green metal key to the ongoing energy transition.
For its part, Tanzania is in the midst of a buildup of its railway network, seeking to position its Dar es Salaam port as a gateway to landlocked central African countries. Unlike many of its neighbors, Tanzania has partnered with a diverse set of contractors and lenders in its infrastructure buildup, avoiding dependence on China.
Passenger rail service on the first phase of Tanzania’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), which links Dar es Salaam to the capital Dodoma, commenced this summer. It was constructed by Turkish contractor Yapi Merkezi, uses locomotives and rolling stock from South Korea, and was financed in part by Standard Chartered Bank. Subsequent phases of Tanzania’s SGR are being built not just by Yapi Merkezi but also by Chinese contractors, with financing from a range of lenders, including the African Development Bank and China EximBank.
China’s renewed interest in TAZARA is likely in response to the U.S.-backed Lobito Corridor — which aims to link the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of Congo and copper-rich Zambia by rail with Angola’s Lobito Port on the Atlantic Coast. The Lobito Corridor is a flagship project of the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII).
For more on the renewed competition between great powers in central Africa’s infrastructure, listen to our conversation from earlier this year with Cobus van Staden:
Arif Rafiq is the editor of Globely News. Rafiq has contributed commentary and analysis on global issues for publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, the New York Times, and POLITICO Magazine.
He has appeared on numerous broadcast outlets, including Al Jazeera English, the BBC World Service, CNN International, and National Public Radio.