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With Access to South Africa’s Main Port Still Hampered, The Rush Is on To Build Alternate Trade Routes for DRC Resources

by Eric Olander
Map of a proposed railway that would connect the cobalt mining zone in the southern DRC to the Atlantic Coast port in Namibia's Walvis Bay.

With road and rail access to South Africa’s main port in Durban still blocked by the damage from the past week of record floods, there’s a new urgency to develop alternate trade routes for the vast quantities of natural resources that flow from the mining belts in the southern DRC and Zambia — mostly bound for China.

While new routes connecting the Congolese cobalt mining hub Lumbubashi with ports in Angola and Tanzania are now either in the process of being upgraded or developed, Namibia also wants to compete for that business.

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