The Railway Test

In August 2026, the Congolese Council of Ministers agreed to a $1.26 billion collaboration deal to restore the Dilolo–Sakania railway line, a thousand kilometers long from Angola to Zambia. Freight on trucks previously took forty-five days, but the railway would reduce this to ten days. This railway is part of the Lobito Corridor, a network designed in 1902 by Sir Robert Williams to ship Katanga copper to a European port.

The question is whether this route still makes sense today, and whether repairing rather than redesigning is the best approach. One way to test colonial-era African railways is to map their endpoints - mines, oil fields, or plantation belts, and ports. These lines almost always run inland and parallel to the coast, without stopping at particularly useful points.

This pattern is not coincidental - it reflects a business plan focused on extraction rather than trade. Colonial powers never coordinated track gauges, leading to a physical inability for networks to join up in places. This has compounded the first issue, adding cost, time, and opportunity for loss. As a result, intra-African trade makes up only 15-16% of the continent's total trade, compared to 60% in Asia.

African countries trade more readily with the rest of the world, with customs dwell time averaging 126 hours and logistics costs close to double the global average. However, there are ways to change this. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, which entered force in 2025, could reduce foreign exchange costs on intra-African transactions by 20-30%.

This shows that while the physical infrastructure is deeply entrenched, the map is editable when someone decides to edit it.