Tanzania and Angola have agreed to connect their Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean transport corridors with a railway link running through Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced on Thursday, October 30, 2026.
The agreement will see Angola’s Benguela railway join the Tanzania-Zambia Railway line, known as TAZARA, to Tanzania’s port of Dar es Salaam. This would link the Lobito corridor on Angola’s Atlantic coast with the central corridor on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast, creating a coast-to-coast rail network across the continent. Hassan did not give a date for the completion of the initiative.
The proposed connection brings together two major infrastructure projects backed by rival global powers. The Lobito Corridor is supported by the United States and the European Union, while TAZARA has long been seen as a counterweight to Western influence in the region and was originally financed by China in the 1970s. In 2025, China signed a $1.4 billion pact with Zambia and Tanzania to modernise the TAZARA railway. This week, Italian construction firm Webuild also announced it had won a tender to build a section of the Zambia-Lobito Railway Corridor.
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The rail link runs through Zambia and the DRC, a region home to some of Africa’s richest deposits of copper and cobalt, minerals that are vital to the global energy transition. The agreement complicates the geopolitical narrative around both railways, as connecting the Western-backed Lobito Corridor with the China-backed TAZARA would turn what were seen as rival routes into a single network. This would give Zambia and the DRC access to both oceans without having to choose between China and the West.
Beyond the rail connection, Angola has also invited Tanzania to invest in an oil refinery. President Hassan said the state energy firm Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation is assessing the viability of a partnership in the Lobito oil refinery project. Tanzania has not yet said whether it will take up an equity stake in a refinery being built in Kenya by Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote. East African governments have been offered a 30 percent stake, and Rwanda and Kenya have so far committed to buying shares. Tanzania and Uganda are also discussing plans to jointly build another refinery in Tanzania’s port of Tanga.
The agreement marks a significant step towards deeper economic integration between East and Southern Africa, potentially reshaping trade routes and logistics across the continent.
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