China is to rehabilitate one of Africa’s oldest railways – the 1 860 km Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority line (TAZARA).

Although China made the proposal in March to refurbish the line, built with Chinese aid in the 1970s, the parties only inked the US$1 billion deal at the recent Forum on China Africa-Cooperation, Reuters reports.

The railway line connects Zambia’s landlocked copper mines to Tanzania’s port at Dar es Salaam. Copper, of which there is a global shortage, is a critical mineral in the production of batteries for electric vehicles.

The deal follows recent US investment of US$250 million in the Lobito rail corridor linking the DRC and Zambia to Angola on Africa’s west coast

The China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation has proposed a public-private partnership approach to the TAZARA project, focusing more on developing and running the concession on a commercial basis.

10 September 2024
Image: Freepik