When it was built in the 1970s, the Tazara railway was China’s biggest ever foreign infrastructure project, and the biggest project for Africa since the construction of the Aswan and Volta dams (“‘Freedom railway’ symbolises China’s ambitions to take on the US in Africa”, Report, March 13).
It was also the first example of the template for foreign investment that has come to define China’s approach in the decades since, and was the test case for Premier Zhou Enlai’s famous eight “principles” of Chinese aid set out in January 1964; the first of which was that all projects had to be to mutual advantage.
For many reasons, the Tazara is an illuminating counterpoise to the “Lobito Corridor” (formerly the Benguela Railway), which under the Biden administration was branded as America’s challenge to China’s foothold in Africa and which seems likely to remain so under Donald Trump’s regime (one of the few points of consistency between the two).
Ironically, the Tazara could have been an American project. When President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia sought international succour for their dream of a long-range connecting railway, they first approached the US. Uncle Sam declined to help, choosing instead to fund an upgrade to Cecil Rhodes’s “Great North Road”. China stepped in with an offer that the Tanzanians and Zambians accepted, albeit with reservations.
Thus, but for that myopic decision in the 1960s, the US could be the de facto sponsor and architect of a rail network spanning Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic — and with it, the US could have privileged access to all the precious minerals of the Zambian and Congolese copper belt.
Sam Williams
London E14, UK
