Two long-stalled African rail projects moved this year, and between them they pose the question raised in Bandung in 1955: whether a corridor takes a country’s raw materials out, or brings its whole economy up.

On Aug. 26 in Kinshasa, in the presence of Presidents Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and João Lourenço of Angola, the DRC signed a rail concession for the Congolese section of the Lobito Corridor with the African subsidiary of the Portuguese construction group Mota-Engil. The Dilolo-Sakanya line runs about 1,000 km, serving Kolwezi, Tenké, and Lubumbashi, with a planned investment of some $1.25 billion covering studies, rehabilitation, modernization, extension, operation, and maintenance. The concession runs 30 years, after which the infrastructure transfers to the Congolese state. The corridor, which reaches the Atlantic through Angola and also serves Zambia, is backed by the United States as an alternative critical-minerals supply route.

Tshisekedi addressed that perspective directly. “Our ambition is not to build a mere corridor for evacuating raw materials,” he said. “We want to build a corridor of production, of transformation and of value creation—a corridor capable of carrying minerals, certainly, but also agricultural produce, industrial inputs, hydrocarbons, containers and goods.” What matters, he said, is “the training of our youth, the development of national skills, the use of local firms, and effective transfer of technology.” Lourenço added that the corridor “belongs neither to Angola nor to the DRC,” calling it a transnational project benefiting the whole continent.