Zambia's Railway Lines Turn into a Battleground for Minerals

Arabian Sea Newspaper - Special

Arab Sea - Follow-ups: Africa is emerging as a new front in the critical minerals conflict, with the United States, Japan, and China supporting the creation of competing railway corridors from Zambia to the coast. China still dominates the processing and refining of 19 out of 20 key minerals, with a market share of about 70%. Control of railways and ports has now become a strategic lever to determine where important African minerals ultimately flow. China and the West have moved their competition to secure essential minerals to a new battleground – Central and Southern Africa, where the race to secure vital routes for transporting essential minerals to demand markets has reached its peak. The United States, Japan, and China are supporting three different railway corridors in Africa, where a large portion of the world's copper and cobalt supplies are extracted. As the United States and its allies seek to reduce their dependence on China for essential mineral supplies, these three corridors, all starting in Zambia and ending in major export ports, have become essential to determining who will influence the direction of these exports. At the end of last year, the United States announced its commitment to provide a loan of up to $553 million to develop the Lobito Atlantic Railway in Angola, saying: "The project is expected to expand and secure critical mineral supply chains, increase rail transport capacity, and reduce the time and costs of transporting goods." For its part, China, through the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), will invest more than $1.4 billion in the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) to revitalize railway infrastructure and operations. Japan announced last month that it would support the Nacala Corridor, an international corridor in southeastern Africa that connects the landlocked countries of Zambia and Malawi to the Indian Ocean via the port of Nacala in Mozambique. Shahrukh Wani, an economist at the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics, told the South China Morning Post that by supporting railways and ports, countries are securing their long-term influence over how minerals flow. Currently, China is winning the global race for essential and rare earth minerals; China enjoys a dominant global position in the supply of essential and rare earth minerals, but its grip on the value chain – mineral processing and magnet production – is even tighter. China has an unmatched position in terms of size, having built its refining capabilities over the past three decades, and at the beginning of its journey, Beijing realized that refined products - not raw materials - are the key to strategic and economic dominance over essential and rare earth minerals. In context, the International Energy Agency warned in its new annual report, "Global Critical Minerals Outlook," that the excessive concentration of critical mineral supplies in a few countries and export controls imposed by China increase the risk of "painful disruptions" in the market. Despite major deals and government support in the West to build domestic supply chains, China has succeeded in increasing its market share over the past few years. Over the five years to 2024, growth in refined material production has been heavily concentrated among the top suppliers, with China dominating the refining of 19 of the 20 minerals the agency analyzed, with an average market share of around 70%. The IEA said that "three-quarters of these minerals showed greater price volatility than oil, and half were more volatile than natural gas," noting that key areas of risk include high supply chain concentration, price volatility, and reliance on by-products. Now the critical minerals race is expanding from raw material extraction to controlling the routes by which materials reach markets. Railway corridors and ports are becoming strategic tools to ensure who determines the final destination of copper and cobalt, and who will dominate future supplies. In the same context, the conflict over critical minerals is turning into an all-out confrontation involving production, processing, and transportation infrastructure, making Africa the new center of influence for global economic conflicts.