The US company All-American Rail Group will develop a rail project to link Luanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Angolan Ministry of Transport (Mintrans) has said.
The project is valued at 4.5 billion dollars (around 4.2 billion euros), according to a statement released by Mintrans.
The memorandum of understanding was signed on Sunday, and the next stage was the creation of a working group chaired by Ricardo Viegas d’Abreu, head of the Transport portfolio, and made up of officials from the National Directorate for the Economy of Concessions, the Luanda Railway, the National Land Transport Agency and the All-American Rail Group.
The Mintrans statement stressed that “the interconnection with DRCongo will make it possible to export oil, wood and minerals to the Atlantic countries” and that the project is designed to strengthen Angola’s food security, supporting the agricultural expansion of Angola’s northern provinces (Uíge, Kwanza-Norte, Bengo, Malanje and Zaire) in “synergy with the logistics platforms of Soyo, Malanje, Luvo and Lombe”.
Quoted in the statement, Mustafa Ocalir, a member of the North American company’s Board of Directors, stressed that this memorandum is the first step in supporting the plan to expand the Angolan rail network, through the Northern Corridor: “we intend to build and integrate the railroad with logistics platforms and a port in this agricultural region”.
In the last five years, AARG and its partners have earned 19.7 billion dollars (around 18.3 billion euros), having built and taken over the management of 3,000 rail projects in the United States.
The consortium has financing from the US Export-Import Bank and is due to open a representative office in Luanda soon.