DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
RAILWAYS AFRICA
3-2016
A train locomotives stationed in Kalemie station when they officially released in November 2015
Development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo The DRC is situated right in the heart of the African continent and shares its borders with nine neighbouring states, including Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, The Central African Republic, The Republic of Congo and Angola. The country spans a staggering 2.3 million square kilometres and supports a population of around 80 million. Currently, the DRC ranks fifth in the world for its wealth in natural resources, with approximately 20% of the territory in the country having been comprehensively surveyed. The country’s capital city, Kinshasa, supports 12 million people and is the third most densely populated city on the continent. Other central economic hubs include the cities of Lubumbashi in the south and Kisangani to the north. The country’s mineral wealth is scattered throughout the territory, with gold in the north; columbium, tin, tantalum and tungsten in the east; cobalt and copper in the south; and diamonds in the central regions. These mineral rich ores 24 www.railwaysafrica.com
are extracted and need to be transported as bulk freight through neighbouring states to ports for export, or to the industrial centres of the country for processing. Over the past 15 years, billions of US dollars have been spent on surveying territories in the DRC for new raw materials. Many of these projects have been successful, and mining has begun in some areas of the country. The challenge of transporting commodities out of the region remains. Much of the raw minerals mined throughout the DRC are transported to the south of the country, where they are transported via road to South Africa. This is prohibitively costly and leaves a significant portion of the raw materials mined in stockpiles.
The first railway lines were constructed in the DRC in the late 1800s, during colonial rule. Crossborder railway projects linking then German East Africa, now Tanzania and the Belgian Congo included a railway ferry to ensure effective mobility of freight in the area. By June 1960, when the DRC became an independent state, there was approximately 3,600km of modernised, electric railway infrastructure in the country, which was on par with systems in Europe at the time. As a result of political instability, regional conflict and the resultant economic difficulties during the 1990s, the existing infrastructure deteriorated, and investment in the modernisation and expansion of the railway system was impossible.
An ex-South African class 35 diesel, now owned and operated by Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Congolais (SNCC – the state railway in the Democratic Republic of Congo). Photo: C van Wyk.