Two recent major investment announcements have refocused attention on the Lobito Corridor, a Western-backed infrastructure initiative centred on a railway linking Lobito on Angola’s Atlantic coast to the inland resource-rich areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia.
On 3 July, the US International Development Finance Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa secured a $753-million package to rehabilitate and upgrade the 1,300-km single-track railway from Lobito to the DRC border, known as the Lobito Atlantic Railway.
On 10 July, the DRC government approved a partnership with Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil for a complete rehabilitation of the railway line from Angola’s border to the copper and cobalt producing regions in the DRC.
These moves are part of wider geopolitical competition between the US (and its European partners) and China – the dominant international presence in the region – over infrastructure, mineral production and development opportunities. In this context, the railway has become the centrepiece of a potential regional mining ecosystem that could economically transform Africa’s strategic Copperbelt.
Railway lines are approximate and based on a combination of maps from the Lobito Corridor Investment Promotion Authority and the European Commission, accessed online. Base map made with Natural Earth and World Bank data.
But for this regional mining ecosystem to become integrated across borders and achieve genuine economic transformation, it will need to be digitized.
Digitization has increasingly become a vital and under-appreciated feature of the mining sector. Data systems – such as online geological databases, traceability tools and transparency portals – and mining cadastre systems (online land records of mining rights) are fundamental to achieving regional mining ambitions.
However, they present a new and distinct set of governance challenges that span the life of a mine: in particular, what data is needed and how is it collected? Who owns it, where is it stored, and who has access to it?
Digitized records and their challenges
The digitized geological records of the DRC are a source of value, causing competition over owning and accessing them. This can be seen in the recent disagreement between the Belgian government and KoBold, a US company backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, over who should digitize the colonial-era geological records on the DRC that are being kept in a Belgian museum. Belgium has refused KoBold access to the museum’s archives. The case demonstrates how geo-economic competition and ensuing public-private tensions are catalysing ongoing debates on data ownership and management.
Angola, the DRC and Zambia are implementing online cadastre systems that list land records of mining rights. In principle, these systems should reduce overlaps and simplify the allocation of rights, while being more transparent to help prevent corruption and give investors confidence. However, several challenges have emerged.
Firstly, digitized systems are still corruptible. Whether containing geological data or information on licenses and rights, digital systems can be corrupted. In some instances, digitization makes this easier than when information is stored in hard copy.
This has led some mining companies to lose confidence in digitized systems in the region, due to changes allegedly being made overnight to concession ownership, opaque back end controls and limited audit trails.
Secondly, these systems often depend on human capacity that does not yet fully exist. At the DRC Mining Week at Lubumbashi in June, Chatham House heard how digital cadastres had often been operated by staff with limited experience working with computers.
The effectiveness of a data system relies on a simple principle – what comes out is only as good as what goes in. Bad inputs result in misleading information flows. Digitization without capacity and safeguards therefore risks simply re encoding existing power imbalances into a new format.
Tracing requires trust and interoperability
The DRC and its neighbours have been the focus of several international legal and regulatory requirements to report on minerals provenance, or tracing minerals back to their origin. This is due to the link between conflict and minerals, especially in the east of the country.
The DRC’s state-owned certification agency (CEEC) has launched an E-trace digital platform to track and certify minerals across the value chain, ostensibly to ensure responsible sourcing.
However, there are notable differences between what international markets are asking for, what is actually feasible, and what is in the best interests of mining-dependent communities and producing states.
Consumers and regulators increasingly want mechanisms that can trace a material all the way back to where it came out of the ground to provide assurance on provenance and responsible production. For the DRC, traceability is often understood primarily as verification of mineral deposits and exports: ensuring that reported volumes and qualities match what is actually being taken out of the country and transported along the Corridor.
The DRC’s emphasis reflects genuine concerns about misreporting, leakage and illicit flows. However, it stops short of a fuller, mine to manufacturer conception of traceability that would follow material all the way through the supply chain.
Similarly, transparency systems are often limited by what companies can easily measure and are willing to disclose. Reporting formats also differ across firms and jurisdictions, making it difficult to assemble a coherent picture of corridor wide performance.
How these systems talk to each other, what they measure, and who controls them will heavily influence whether the Lobito Corridor becomes a coherent, credible space for investment and accountable development.
More unified data management requires interoperable systems and standards, agreed protocols for data ownership and access, and shared understandings of what traceability and transparency should encompass. Trustworthy, interoperable data systems are essential.
Entry points for development partners
Digital infrastructure should in theory constitute the backbone of effective data governance along the Lobito Corridor, turning physical infrastructure into an integrated ecosystem. Given Africa’s over-reliance on undersea cables, reinforcing inland connectivity should be a priority.
However, the Corridor’s digital component has so far lagged behind. While it does feature in the long-term strategic vision for the Corridor, it has not been the focus of the recent wave of investment announcements or ongoing development partnerships. Meanwhile, the DRC recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Beijing for the construction of a 2100km fibre optic network along the Congo River.