The Democratic Republic of Congo has awarded Portuguese construction group Mota-Engil a 30-year concession to operate and modernize the Dilolo-Sakania railway, a 1,004.5-kilometer line that links the country’s copper-and-cobalt belt to the Atlantic through Angola’s Lobito Corridor.
The agreement, signed in Kinshasa on Aug. 26, calls for an estimated $1.26 billion of investment in track rehabilitation and modernization. The line runs through some of the DRC’s most important mining areas, including Kolwezi, Tenke and Lubumbashi, making it a critical piece of infrastructure for exporters seeking an alternative to routes through southern and eastern Africa.
Under the concession, the Congolese state will hold a 10% stake in the project vehicle and receive a royalty equal to 7.5% of gross revenue. The state railway company, SNCC, will retain passenger-transport exclusivity as well as certain freight rights.
Mota-Engil is already involved on the Angolan side of the corridor, where it holds a 50% interest in the consortium operating the Lobito Atlantic Railway.
That gives the company a potentially important role across both ends of a route that Washington and Kinshasa increasingly view as strategic to critical-mineral supply chains.
For the DRC, the deal is about more than moving copper and cobalt faster.
The government has increasingly argued that Lobito should support processing, industrial activity and local value creation rather than function solely as an export corridor.
The next test is execution.
Rail concessions in Africa have often been slowed by financing gaps, maintenance failures and weak traffic guarantees. Mota-Engil now has three decades to show that the Congolese section of Lobito can become a commercially viable logistics backbone rather than another infrastructure promise.
At the end of the concession period, the rehabilitated assets are expected to revert to the Congolese state.
