The Lobito Railway has a long history of foreign ownership and investment. When did construction start?
It was initiated around the turn of the 20th century when Angola was still a Portuguese colony and built over the following 30 years. The idea was to connect Angola’s Atlantic port of Lobito with the mineral rich interior of central Africa, particularly those areas in what are now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia. By the early 1970s, the railway was the country’s largest single employer, transporting large numbers of passengers and huge amounts of cargo to and from Central Africa.
