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China signed a deal on Wednesday to upgrade a railway line that will allow landlocked Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, to export the metal via Tanzania.
The heads of state of the three countries oversaw the ceremony during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which marked the start of the largest renovation of the so-called Tazara railway since Mao Zedong approved its construction in the 1970s.
While no details of the deal were released, China reported in February that the plan would cost more than $1 billion.
The line, which connects Zambia’s mines to Tanzania’s main port on Africa’s east coast, could play a crucial role in exporting copper to China, the largest consumer of the metal used in items ranging from air conditioners to electric vehicles.
China’s takeover of a strategic export route for critical minerals from Zambia and neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo is partly a response to U.S. support for another rail project going the other way, to Africa’s west coast. It’s the latest move in a battle for influence that’s fueling a rail revival in the region.
The Chinese government has acted quickly since Zambia asked for help in rehabilitating the line. State-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Corp sent its experts to inspect the railway in December. Three months later, the Chinese ambassador to Zambia officially presented the proposal to revive the line and operate it commercially. Negotiations followed, resulting in the deal on Wednesday.
Tazara has played a symbolic role in China’s relations with Africa, as it was the first major infrastructure project it built on the continent. At the time, Mao’s government had little funding of its own, but still chose to help Zambia with the new 1,860-kilometer (1,156-mile) railway.
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The landlocked nation was at the time stuck, after the then Rhodesian government declared independence from Britain and closed the border, blocking Zambia’s main export route through South Africa. President Kenneth Kaunda approached various financiers for the railway project, including the World Bank, but only China would help.
That crucial aid put China in a good position to now take over commercial operations on the line, which has fallen into disrepair. It operates at a fraction of its design capacity of 5 million metric tons per year. Most of the freight moving in and out of Zambia and Congo goes by road, with journeys taking up to a month to reach the port of Durban in South Africa.
“You can’t beat Tazara” when it comes to minerals going to the Far East, Bruno Ching’andu, CEO of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority, said in an interview last month.
“These are the people who built the line, who built the line,” he said. “They’ve sent different teams to look at the bridges, to look at all the infrastructure along the line. They certainly seem to know what’s needed.”
Untested model
The deal also reflects a more cautious stance by China towards overseas infrastructure projects after several large loans extended under the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative fell through.
Zambia borrowed more than $6 billion from its lenders and went bankrupt in 2020, triggering a painful debt restructuring process that has yet to be fully completed. China Civil has proposed a public-private partnership approach to revitalizing Tazara, focusing more on developing and operating the concession on a commercial basis.
According to Trevor Simumba, a development economist who wrote an article about China’s loans to his country, this is a model that has not yet been tested in Zambia.
“This is a big test for China,” he said. “I have a feeling it will work.”
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–With assistance from Twinnie Siu and Yanping Li.
(Updated with cost estimate in third paragraph.)
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