America has secured another win for its ambitions to lock down ore loads from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), coming days after Zambia announced that it’s proceeding with the construction of a rail link joining the Lobito Corridor.
The news that the US, along with its mediating partner in the Middle East, Qatar, has brokered a cessation of hostilities between the DRC and Rwanda is good news for Angola’s Port of Lobito and ongoing infrastructural pit-to-port developments.
It is hoped that the Washington peace agreement will end 30 years of conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions.
US President Donald Trump has also said it could open the way for billions of dollars of Western investment in the mineral-rich region.
However, as with previous peace accords between warring parties, the latest agreement will have to prove the test of time.
Previously, the DRC and Rwanda have lapsed into a recurring internecine struggle in the Lake Kivu area.
Hours before Friday’s agreement was signed, a militia group called the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo attacked a camp for the displaced in Lake Albert’s Ituri Province, killing 10.
But there’s hope among world leaders that the latest peace agreement will bring an end to the bloodshed that disrupted socio-economic progress in the mineral-rich area.
One of them is Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State.
Speaking to reporters after the peace agreement was signed, he said it was hoped long-awaited prosperity would finally come to the eastern DRC, long destabilised by militia forces purported to protect Rwandan interests in the region.
Trump described the development as a new chapter of hope, emphasising that it will give the US access to the DRC’s minerals, most definitely through logistics on the Lobito Corridor, America’s most direct access route to the eastern DRC.
