The US company All-American Rail Group will develop a railway project to link Luanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Angolan Ministry of Transport (Mintrans) said.
The project has been valued at 4.5 billion dollars (around 4.2 billion euros), according to a statement released by Mintrans.
The agreement of understanding was signed on Sunday, and the next stage was the creation of a working group chaired by Ricardo Viegas d’Abreu, head of the Transport portfolio, and made up of officials from the National Directorate for the Economy of Concessions, the Luanda Railway, the National Land Transport Agency and the All-American Rail Group.
The Mintrans statement stressed that “the interconnection with DRCongo will make it possible to export oil, wood and minerals to the Atlantic countries” and that the project is designed to strengthen Angola’s food security, supporting the agricultural expansion of Angola’s northern provinces (Uíge, Kwanza-Norte, Bengo, Malanje and Zaire) in “synergy with the logistics platforms of Soyo, Malanje, Luvo and Lombe”.
Quoted in the statement, Mustafa Ocalir, a member of the North American company’s Board of Directors, pointed out that this memorandum is the first step in supporting the plan to expand the Angolan railway network, through the Northern Corridor: “we intend to build and integrate the railway with logistics platforms and a port in this agricultural region”.
The Angolan transport minister pointed out that the Railway Master Plan “calls for the extension of the three national corridors to the borders with neighbouring countries, with the priority aim of boosting connections to the respective ports on the coast, facilitating cross-border trade and boosting the real economy in Angola,” he said in the same statement.
Ricardo Viegas D’Abreu also pointed to the development potential of the Northern Corridor, which despite ending in Malanje, could be extended to the north and east of the country, the most populous regions and “with natural characteristics favourable to the implementation of agribusiness, trade, industry and tourism activities”.
The All-American Rail Group (AARG) is a railway consortium based in Houston, Texas, made up of six US railway and infrastructure companies.
In the last five years, AARG and its partners have earned 19.7 billion dollars (around 18.3 billion euros), having built and taken over the management of 3,000 railway projects in the United States.
The consortium has funding from the US Export-Import Bank and is due to open a representative office in Luanda soon.
The US recently announced that it will make one billion dollars (around 929 million euros) available to support the development of the Lobito Corridor, which links Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.
The issue was one of the highlights of the meeting on 30 November between Angolan President João Lourenço and his US counterpart, Joe Biden.
Investment in this railway infrastructure, which links the ore-rich regions of Zambia and the DRC to the Angolan port of Lobito, is seen as a US and European response to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, which aims to improve China’s international connections.
Lusa
