Southern Africa's Resource Hunt

A competition is developing among several southern African nations to bring minerals produced in Africa's landlocked regions to ports along the coastline. The prize for the competing nations is Katanga province, a mineral-rich region in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia's Copperbelt province. Katanga produces 580,000 metric tons of copper per year and about 60,000 metric tons of cobalt per year. Zambia produces about 675,000 metric tons of copper per year. Together they account for 7 percent of the world's copper production and roughly half the world's cobalt.

Currently most of Katanga's mineral exports pass through South Africa and Tanzania, though efforts are underway to redirect some of this traffic to Angola and Namibia. Mineral producers would prefer to transport their wares by rail, which is much cheaper than road transport. But with its vast rain forests, central Africa's geography is ill suited for the requisite infrastructure. There are a few exceptions; minerals sometimes are shipped by rail through Zambia to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. Given the geographic constraints and the reliability of South Africa's export infrastructure, minerals produced in Katanga and Copperbelt typically are transported by road through Zambia and Botswana to the South African port of Durban.

With a more efficient transport system, Katanga and Zambia could export larger volumes of minerals, assuming their respective governments do not interfere too much. The success of these efforts depends partly on the completion of various infrastructure development projects. But if successful, they could produce new, dependable export corridors in countries that sorely need the revenue and the commercial opportunity such trade routes create.

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