The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) plans to build or rehabilitate 22,800 kilometers of roads and railways in partnership with the World Bank, Infrastructure Minister John Banza Lunda said on Oct. 12.
The program gives priority to three corridors: Banana, on the Atlantic coast; Lobito, which runs through Angola to the Atlantic; and the Paix corridor, Banza said. The aim is to connect them to the central corridor, which leads to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and to the Trans-African corridor.
The plan includes a 1,080-kilometer road between Mbuji-Mayi, in the center of the country, and Bukavu in the east. The minister described it as Congo’s first motorway.
The government didn’t disclose the cost of the program, a timetable or the size of the World Bank’s contribution.
Congo exported $93.2 billion of goods from 2023 to 2025, mainly copper and cobalt from the southeast, according to the central bank. The Lobito corridor is the main rail route under development for moving that output west to the Atlantic.
What to watch
Financing terms from the World Bank, and a project timetable from the Infrastructure Ministry.