Italian PM Meloni Announces Summit on African Lobito Corridor Project
A train in the Lobito Corridor. X/ @360Angola
May 19, 2025 Hour: 9:35 am
The Western powers seek to secure the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, copper and coltan.
On Monday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced a summit with several countries, focused on the Lobito Corridor—a major African railway project through which the West aims to compete with China.
RELATED:
U.S. Launches Endless War to Plunder Others’ Resources: Pezeshkian
The conference, scheduled for June 20 in Rome, will be co-chaired by Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It will also include participation of multilateral financial institutions.
The summit aims to “consolidate the work carried out so far” and “announce the completion of new projects,” Meloni said during a meeting on her “Mattei Plan,” which funds initiatives in African countries to curb Mediterranean migration.
She intends to align the Mattei Plan with the European “Global Gateway” strategy to boost investments in Africa. In the lead-up to the Rome summit, Meloni expressed support for “continuing to work with the United States on the major Lobito Corridor infrastructure project,” as well as with Gulf countries.
The Lobito Corridor is a railway line in the heart of Africa, where China and the West are competing to secure mineral supply chains. The project aims to link ports on Africa’s Atlantic coast with mining regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia, via Angola.
Currently, the corridor consists of a 1,300-kilometer railway line from the port of Lobito on Angola’s Atlantic coast to the Angolan city of Luau, on the border with the DRC. From there, it continues another 400 kilometers to the Congolese mining city of Kolwezi, near the Zambian border.
Plans are in place to build another 800 kilometers of track to extend the railway into Zambia. The United States even envisions the corridor eventually reaching Africa’s eastern coast.
After decades of neglect, the route has regained interest from Western powers, especially in their race to secure valuable raw materials. Both Zambia and the DRC hold some of the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, copper and coltan.
The U.S. and the European Union support the development of the Lobito Corridor in an effort to curb China’s growing influence, as Beijing has already become a key commercial player on the continent.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
