On November 24-25, some 47 heads of state and government are due to gather in the Angolan capital, Luanda, for the seventh African Union — European Union Summit, aiming to deepen cooperation.

It comes after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier paid a visit to Angola just weeks ago to sound out investment opportunities, with Germany seeking to broaden its partnerships in Africa after turning away from Russian oil and gas in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Angola is an energy giant and logistics hub, and Steinmeier was direct in Germany’s aims during the trip.

“[Angola] is not only of interest to the world as a supplier of oil and gas, but in recent years, it has also signaled that it wants to diversify its own economy,” said the president during his visit, throwing Germany’s proverbial hat in the ring in vying for influence on the African state.

High-level visits to Luanda continued following Steinmeier’s visit, with dignitaries from around the world flying in on November 11 to join Angola’s 50th independence anniversary celebrations.

“One of the key priorities of President Joao Lourenco’s leadership as acting president of the African Union is infrastructure financing. This is critical,” said Ricardo Viegas D’Abreu, Angola’s transport minister, pointing to his country’s need for more cash injections — in return for whatever favors might be tabled by its partners.

Lobito Corridor: Angola’s coveted flagship project

These days, any talk of infrastructure in Angola inevitably turns to the Lobito Corridor, the country’s flagship infrastructure project.

The main artery of the transport corridor is a 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) rail link between Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and — in future — Zambia, aiming to connect Africa’s mineral-rich interior directly to the Atlantic port city of Lobito.

Trains are already running along the much-coveted route, transporting mostly copper from Congolese mines to Lobito, from where the cargo is shipped to Europe and the United States. On their return trips into Africa’s interior, the trains carry sulfur back to Congo, a a mineral which is essential for mining operations.

Growth at a snail’s pace

At first glance, the railway itself may not look impressive. For the most part, it’s run on a single track with no fencing around or other protective structures.

The freight trains can only run at a maximum speed of 45 kilometers per hour (about 30 miles per hour); on some stretches, this is reduced to only 30 kilometers per hour — barely faster than the top speeds of an average bicycle.

But the trains themselves aren’t the only lethargic feature of the $1 billion-project. Bureaucratic procedures associated with customs clearance are also causing significant delays in moving goods from one part of the African continent to the next, as observed in an OECD report published on the state of the corridor earlier this year.

The whole Lobito Corridor system is rather unassuming from beginning to end; even in places like Huambo and nearby Caala, whose municipalities put together are inching closer to featuring a population of a million people, there are relatively small stations along the way.

Nonetheless, the ambitious project offers a series of significant competitive advantages, said Anna Hoffmann-Kwanga, head of the Namibia and Angola office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation — a political foundation linked to Germany’s conservative Christian-Democrats (CDU) party.

“This railway is practically competing with a corridor from the DRC that leads south to Durban,” said Hoffmann-Kwanga, highlighting that this rival railroad needs a full month to move goods and resources from Congo to the South African port city, “whereas the distance to Lobito would only take eight days in a best-case scenario.”

Even with the worst of delays, Hoffmann-Kwanga said the Lobito pathway is on average at least twice as fast than the alternative route.

Angola is heavily dependent on China

Many of the infrastructural delays on the railway are due to the fact that it dates back to the early 20th century.

Built during the Portuguese colonial era, the Lobito Corridor was heavily damaged during Angola’s war of independence and the civil war that followed — a period of conflict and instability that spanned over 40 years starting in the early 1960s.

Destroyed parts of the rail link were later rebuilt — with help from China. In fact, Beijing only agreed to finance the reconstruction of the Lobito project using Angola’s oil as collateral.

Applying the same rationale to many other infrastructure projects supported by China after the official end of animosities in 2002, Angola eventually became China’s largest borrower in Africa, owing an estimated total of $46 billion, according to data compiled by Boston University.

From China to US to EU: Angola’s balancing act

Now, Angola is trying to balance this overreliance on China by seeking other partners.

Since taking office in 2017, President Lourenco has courted Western partners — with considerable success.

Both the European Union and the US have pledged billions to the Lobito Corridor project; the railway itself is now operated by a European consortium, and both partners have shifted their narrative to one of genuine “partnership” rather than a perpetuation of economic dependency, Beijing-style.

“Europe has a very different offer. The Lobito Corridor breaks with the extractive logic of other corridors, both colonial and current,” said Hoffmann-Kwanga, emphasizing in particular China’s current policy.

The Lobito Corridor project, she explained, will improve living conditions for all communities along the route.

Local communities last to profit

That vision, however, is still far-removed from today’s reality. So far, people living along the route only watch on as the trains pass by, said Angolan economist Heitor de Carvalho.

The corridor cuts through an area that is predominantly agricultural. Locals cannot contribute anything that could even begin to compete with the riches that are being transported on the railway, especially not with their current output levels.

De Carvalho highlighted that the region also lacks the infrastructure required to help local farmers sell their products to other regions using the Lobito railway: Road networks need improvement, storage facilities need to be built next to the train stations, business strategies need to be introduced on a massive scale, and production rates need to be ramped up significantly:

“I’m talking about an exponential increase in production — not 3%, but 300%,” he said.

At the same time, de Carvalho stressed that while a positive trickle-down effect on rural farmers situated along the corridor may take long to truly take root, the overall sense of competition between European and US American state investors is welcome.

“This interest has a lot to do with the fact that Angola’s political leadership has opted for a pro-Western approach rather than continuing its traditional ties to Russia and China,” he said.

What can a summit accomplish?

Still, Angola continues to rely heavily on its oil sector rather than reaping the full potential of the Lobito project.

Meanwhile, both the public and foreign investors fear Lourenco has failed to fully address the nation’s corruption problems and the challenges Angola faces when it comes to democratic governance.

That is why Angolan agribusiness entrepreneur Amilcar Armando does not expect much to come out of the two-day AU-EU summit. “These summits … often feel like begging for money for certain projects and risk feeding corruption. We should focus on building our own infrastructure,” he said.

The country, he argued, should do its basic homework, putting people’s immediate needs first rather than hosting lavish summits.

Edited by: Sertan Sanderson