China's Role in Africa's Railway

A new era of China-Africa relations was born in the 1970s when China constructed a railway in southern Africa. Today, as foreign companies in Africa race to complete new lines to transport minerals to ports, China is building railways all across the continent.

Railroads – Old & new

The same high commodity prices that China is grappling with are contributing to a railway construction boom in Africa. Some of the world's leading mining and construction companies are set to invest around $35 billion in rail projects in Africa in the coming five years, and China is at the forefront of this. As foreign companies work to extract vast untapped mineral resources in Africa, they are often confronted with the problem of limited infrastructure to get their mineral finds to a place where they can be shipped out. Hence foreign companies are sometimes compelled to finance their own railway projects. Projects in Africa do carry an amount of risk, as has recently been clearly illustrated by the unrest in North Africa. But with the prices of coal, copper and aluminium all progressing on a steady incline, the potential rewards are lucrative.

Detailed statistics of railway projects currently underway in Africa are hard to come by, yet it is obvious from looking at the projects ongoing across the continent that China is playing a leading role in Africa's railway boom. China's current expansive engagement with Africa was in many ways borne of a railway, namely the Tanzam Railway, which was constructed by China from 1970 to 1975 to give landlocked Zambia a link to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. The Tanzam Railway was constructed with a concessional loan of $500 million, yet today, one of China's leading builders of railways in Africa, China Railway Construction Corp. (CRCC) is busy with railway projects worth billions of dollars, and one in Nigeria (the Lagos-Kano Railway Modernization Project) is worth in excess of $8 billion.

In addition, CRCC is currently occupied with overhauling the Benguela Railway in Angola and doing repair work on three other railways there; another two railway projects in Nigeria, including the construction of a two-track 1,315 km line; and a new two-track railway in southeastern Algeria as well as three other railway projects in Algeria. With the recent unrest in Libya, CRCC had to temporarily cease operations on a railway project it was busy with in this country.