Deep Dive
Why is the U.S. investing billions in upgrading the Lobito rail line in Africa?
The U.S. aims to counter China's dominant investments in African mining by upgrading the Lobito rail line, which connects mineral-rich areas to the Atlantic coast, closer to Western markets.
What role does the Lobito rail line play in global mineral trade?
The Lobito rail line significantly reduces travel time and costs for transporting minerals like cobalt and copper from Central Africa to markets in the U.S. and Europe, bypassing the Indian Ocean route.
How does China's presence in African mining compare to the U.S.?
China dominates the mining sector in Central Africa with extensive investments and operations, while the U.S. lacks significant on-the-ground mining companies, despite recent efforts to upgrade infrastructure like the Lobito rail line.
Why did the U.S. lose control of the Tenke Fungurume mine in Congo?
U.S. firm Freeport-McMoran sold the Tenke Fungurume mine to a Chinese multinational in 2016 due to heavy debt, as they couldn't secure the necessary $2 billion to stay operational, highlighting China's financial advantage in the region.
What impact do local miners have on the global mineral trade?
Local miners in places like Kowezi, Congo, often work in dangerous, illegal conditions to extract minerals, which are then sold to intermediaries, many of whom are Chinese, underscoring the local economic and geopolitical complexities.
Shownotes Transcript
This message comes from GiveWell. GiveWell provides rigorous, transparent research about the best giving opportunities so that donors can make informed decisions about high-impact giving. To learn more, go to GiveWell.org and pick podcast and enter NPR at checkout. Today on State of the World, the U.S. and China vie for influence in Africa.
You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Wednesday, December 4th. I'm Greg Dixon. President Biden just wrapped up a visit to Africa, spending his last day in the Angolan port city of Lobito. It's no coincidence that is the end of the line for a massive railway connecting that port to some of the largest deposits of cobalt and copper in the world.
The U.S. and other Western countries are raising billions to upgrade the 800-mile rail line. It is seen as an attempt to counter China's sizable investments in Africa. Emmett Livingstone went to one of the mining towns along the train's route and found that this effort by the U.S. to match China's influence in Africa is too late and way too little.
If you really want to know why President Biden is spending the dying days of his presidency visiting Africa, you need go no further than here, Kowezi, a city that lies in southern Congo on some of the world's greatest deposits of mineral wealth. I'm here at Impala terminals in Kowezi, where behind me workers in high-vis and hard hats are loading pallets of copper onto open wagons. From here, a train will carry the minerals over 800 miles all the way to the Atlantic coast.
A joint venture of European companies won a concession for the Lobito Atlantic Railway last year. The US, European Union, the G7 and private firms are mobilising billions in investments to upgrade the line and build connected infrastructure.
Washington says the Lobito Corridor project will spur the local economy, but the initiative is seen as a riposte to China, which dominates the mining sector in Central Africa. We would like to sell our products to Europe or North America. Russell Fryer is the CEO of Critical Metals, a British company developing a copper and cobalt mine in the region. While minerals usually leave the continent through the Indian Ocean, Lobito is on the Atlantic, closer to markets in the US and Europe.
It shaves off not only about three weeks of getting product to market, but it also cuts in terms of financial requirements, you know, the timeline. The strategic importance of the region is difficult to overstate. Congo produces over 70% of the world's cobalt, a metal used in electric vehicles and jet engines. It's also the second largest producer of copper. Nowhere is the mining industry's impact more visible than here in Kolwazi, where there's a Chinese pit mine in the town centre.
Along the outskirts, massive slag heaps tower over slum housing. The footprint of Chinese companies is everywhere, from signage and Chinese characters to several Chinese-run casinos, where many in the mining industry go to let off steam.
It's just a railway. It's just a railway. It's nothing more. But for Christian Geronima, a China-Africa analyst and non-resident scholar in the Carnegie Africa program, the Lubito Railway will not serve as a counterweight to China. It's a railway that anybody can use. If you don't have your own mining operation, how can you pretend that you are starting to counter China in the mining space in those countries in Africa? It doesn't make sense.
Western mining majors are present, but the end market remains China. And the US has no companies on the ground. But that wasn't always the case. 55 miles from Kowezi is Tenkei Fungurume Mining. It's the second largest cobalt mine in the world and the fifth largest copper mine.
U.S. firm Freeport-McMoran used to run the mine, but when heavily indebted, it sold it in 2016. A Chinese multinational snapped it up. That was a stupid mistake. And no one in the U.S., in the Treasury, in the State Department, no one left a finger to say, you know what, maybe we should back up Freeport-McMoran. We needed only $2 billion to get out of debt, the situation they had. But they couldn't find money as well. Chinese had money.
US-China competition dominates the headlines, but hundreds of thousands of people in Kowaisi make a living digging ore by hand, often illegally and in dangerous conditions.
In a dirty stream beneath a huge slag heap in a poor neighbourhood, women panned for copper with spades and plastic buckets. It's hard work, says Marie Banza Ngoi, working barefoot in the searing morning heat. The 60-year-old earns about 6,000 Congolese francs a day for the clumps of green copper ore that she digs up. That's about two dollars. Ngoi sells to Congolese intermediaries, who themselves sell on to other traders.
Those traders, she tells me, are Chinese. For Ngoy, like others, geopolitics is irrelevant. For NPR News, I'm Emmett Livingstone in Kilwasee. That's the state of the world from NPR. We've just taken you to a faraway point on the planet. You've heard how geopolitics is playing out on the ground and how it affects the people living there. If you value this kind of journalism, please consider supporting it.
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