Angola och Tanzania planerar järnväg tvär över södra Afrika

In late October, Angola and Tanzania agreed to pioneer a bi-oceanic railway across Southern Africa. The Benguela Railway, which Washington folds into its Lobito Corridor, would link up with the Tanzania-Zambia Railway in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, connecting the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean through four countries whose mineral deposits are indispensable to everything labeled 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'.

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway itself was built by China in the 1970s, and Beijing still holds a dominant position in the copper industries of both the DRC and landlocked Zambia. The current US administration, according to Andrew Korybko's analysis carried by ZeroHedge, is running a 'Strategy of Denial' that aims to deny China the resources and markets it needs to sustain its superpower trajectory. Washington wants to dislodge Beijing from the DRC's coltan and cobalt, and its decoupling policy demands partners reduce Chinese control over these resources — pressure aimed, in the author's telling, at forcing China into a lopsided trade deal that would institutionalize its junior status.

The proposed railway, dubbed SABOR, is where the two bids collide. Whoever builds the line sets the tariffs on the copper, cobalt and lithium moving toward Asian markets — flows that bypass every strait the US Navy patrols. Notably, the article argues, China lacks the capability and will to militarily enforce debt repayments, while American control over Western financial and legal institutions limits China's options if countries illegally withdraw from contracts. Zambia signed a contentious health deal with the US last month; ties with Tanzania, strained for the past year, are now on the mend.

The US is gaining ground in accessing Southern Africa's minerals, though not yet at China's expense. The timeframe for any American push to displace Beijing, Korybko notes, depends on SABOR's completion and possibly its optimization for import costs — which leaves Angola, Tanzania, Zambia and the DRC holding the one asset that matters: the right to auction the build to the highest bidder.