The Mukuba Express had been motionless for eight hours, stopped in a small village about 50 miles west of the Tanzania-Zambia border. “We will be going soon,” a mechanic had told me, but the locomotive was derailed and repair equipment was miles away.
I’d been aboard the train for two days, since I boarded the historic Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) express train in the central Zambian town of Kapiri Mposhi. Despite the delay, life went on. Children played football at the side of the tracks, women sold mangoes, and dozens of cheerful passengers ate plates of fried greens and ugali in the restaurant car.
As I watched travelers, locals, and workers carry on around the stranded train, I thought about how railways in Africa have long been shaped by forces far beyond the passengers they serve. From colonial tracks to today’s foreign-funded megaprojects, railways have always been more than just transport; they have been instruments of influence, competition, and control.
The TAZARA is one of many railway projects constructed or financed in eastern Africa in the past 150 years by a foreign power. From the early stages of colonization to the present day, foreign investment has underpinned most rail infrastructure, providing not only well-needed transportation capacity but also a powerful vessel of foreign control. In recent years, non-African governments have poured billions of dollars of financing into African railway projects, competing for access to natural resources, political capital, and economic control.
In south-central Africa, an intense competition is unfolding: rivaling U.S.- and China-backed railway redevelopment projects have been proposed to unlock access to critical minerals in the copper- and cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia. The U.S.-backed project, the Lobito Corridor, is also supported by the European Union, and proposes a redeveloped railway running east from the port of Lobito, on Angola’s Atlantic coast, to Zambia’s copperbelt region, with a link to Kolwezi in the DRC. The project will rebuild the existing Benguela Railway, which runs along much of the same route.
The TAZARA station at Chozi, northeastern Zambia, shows the faded grandeur of the original railway infrastructure, while remaining an important commercial hub. Photo by Samuel W. Yankee.
The TAZARA, which stretches from Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean to Kapiri Mposhi in central Zambia, was built in the 1970s by China’s government to link Zambian copper ore exports to the Tanzanian port city, bypassing apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. In September 2024, the Tanzania, Zambian, and Chinese heads of state signed a memorandum of understanding for the full concession of the TAZARA to the state-owned China Civil Engineering and Construction Corporation for redevelopment and management for a period of 30 years.
These new proposed projects echo the colonial era of railway construction, during which British, Portuguese, Belgian, and German agents constructed lines – often with forced or coerced labor – to send troops and administrators in and bring goods out. Indeed, the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway, completed in 2017, closely follows the route of the British-built Uganda Railway, completed in 1902 to facilitate the movement of troops to the headwaters of the Nile. The TAZARA, while built in the 1970s, follows routes surveyed by British and German missions during the colonial rule of Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
While the passengers and goods on today’s railways have changed, shared routes are not the only connection with the past. Today’s foreign-backed rail projects, like their colonial predecessors, often come with vast concessions – whether in mining rights, land deals, or long-term control over key transport corridors.
The TAZARA terminus at New Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia, retains its first, second, and third class divisions, holdovers from the colonial railway authorities of the early 20th century. Photo by Samuel W. Yankee.
For many Zambians, the TAZARA represents more than a vessel for exports; it is a lifeline for rural communities and their residents. Larry Banda, a schoolteacher whom I met aboard the TAZARA train from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar es Salaam, has ridden the railway his entire life to visit family, pursue his own education, and now to teach others. “Right now, the rail line is so unreliable because of the challenges the company is facing, like not being able to maintain the schedule, aging infrastructure, and reduced capacity,” Banda explained. “Hence few people are opting to use the rail line.”
This erosion of trust in the railway’s reliability has significant implications. The TAZARA was vital in opening scores of communities to the outside world, enabling access to education, healthcare, and markets for agricultural goods. As Banda pointed out, the redevelopment of TAZARA by the Chinese company has prompted widespread discussion in Zambia. Optimism abounds among those who view the project as a path to economic and social transformation. With promises of smoother operations, improved accessibility, and job creation, many hope the revitalization will bring meaningful change to their lives. Banda expressed his hopes for the TAZARA’s renewal:
The revitalization will win back customers’ confidence… [and] lead to more economic and social transformation in people’s lives, especially in remote areas that are only accessible by rail… Most pupils or students in boarding schools use the train at the beginning of the term or end of term. It’s unfortunate that students or pupils can’t use the train on a daily basis to go to their respective schools. The redevelopment of TAZARA… might make it possible for students or pupils to go [from their homes] to their schools.
However, not all TAZARA users share this optimism. Simon Siame, a farmer and entrepreneur traveling home by train from a business trip, highlighted a darker side of Chinese infrastructure investment. “In Zambia, loans from the Chinese have caused many problems. They got one airport, and copper mines. This is because the government failed to pay back money,” Siame said. “The Chinese do not play around. They will get a national asset and take control over it… That’s the problem of Chinese loans. The cost of living has increased, making it hard for people to survive.”
The Zambian government has struggled since defaulting on its debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. China remains the state’s largest official creditor, and the two countries have been in negotiations to restructure the outstanding debt.
A thousand miles northeast of where I boarded the TAZARA, Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) provides a glimpse of what a Chinese-led redevelopment of the railway could look like. Completed in 2017, the SGR reflects the market-driven modernization of a railway line that for over a hundred years has been considered the country’s main commercial artery. At the same time, it has become a cautionary tale of the costs of doing business with Chinese state partners. The original contract between the Export-Import Bank of China and the Government of Kenya authorized a loan of $3.8 billion for the construction of the line. Since the loan reached maturity in 2020, the Government of Kenya and Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) have struggled to make payments. KRC reported for the 2023 operating year an outstanding balance on the China loan of 617 billion Kenyan shillings, equivalent to about $4.78 billion in 2025.
The Kenyan government’s plight can be seen as a warning to the Zambian and Tanzanian governments ahead of the TAZARA concessioning. Failure to make payments on the SGR loan has led to political upheaval and economic strain, forcing emergency fiscal measures that sparked widespread unrest. The Kenyan government’s immense debt, which stands at about 68 percent of GDP, was a primary factor behind the controversial finance bill passed in June 2024, which aimed to raise taxes in service of national debt. The bill was ultimately withdrawn following widespread protests and the dismissal of nearly the whole national Cabinet.
With Kenya still struggling to service its debt, the question looms: Can Zambia, with a GDP of less than one-third of Kenya’s, afford to follow this lead?
Even while Kenya grapples with the consequences of its SGR partnership, the redeveloped railway has entered into service. When I rode the SGR from Mombasa to Nairobi – seated next to a Chinese businessman in an air-conditioned cabin – orderly queues of passengers boarded a gleaming orange and white train that departed Mombasa Terminus on schedule and arrived in Nairobi on schedule, to the minute.
Several fellow passengers I spoke with praised the comfort and convenience of the new line, contrasted with the previous narrow-gauge service, which had run almost continuously since the line’s opening in 1902. The TAZARA train, meanwhile, rarely exceeded 30 miles per hour as it rumbled past dozens of derailed freight cars rusting away at the side of the tracks.
While China’s railway diplomacy has dominated headlines, the United States has also waded into the infrastructure race. The U.S. government has pledged $803 million toward the Lobito Corridor railway project through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, in loans to the Lobito Atlantic Railway and the Africa Finance Corporation. The project is viewed as a key counterbalance to China’s aggressive infrastructure investment strategy, offering an alternative for regional governments wary of Chinese influence and aggressive lending.
Yet the project now faces enormous hurdles, both from a rapidly expanding conflict between the DRC government and the M23 rebel group and from U.S. domestic policy changes. On January 20, 2025, new U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order asserting that “the United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.” With that, Trump froze all foreign aid and development assistance, leaving projects like the Lobito Corridor in limbo.
While the Lobito project is decidedly pro-business – it advances U.S. access to critical minerals and opens the door to expanded U.S. investment – the next steps remain to be seen. To succeed where previous railway projects have faltered, the Trump administration must balance commercial viability with local stakeholder needs.
As this new railway race for Africa unfolds, the stakes extend far beyond strategic competition and natural resources. These decisions shape the daily reality of millions of passengers like Banda and Siame, determining whether they can reliably reach schools, markets, and opportunities. Will the Lobito Corridor and renewed TAZARA line truly serve those who depend on them? Or will they, like so many railway projects before them, prioritize foreign interests while local priorities remain an afterthought?