Italy’s Webuild and Brazil’s Odebrecht Engenharia & Construção are key members of groups that have been selected as preferred bidders to build an 830 km section of the Lobito Corridor rail connecting central Africa’s copper and cobalt fields with a port on Angola’s Atlantic coast.

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), the lead developer of the so-called Zambia section of the project, chose the groups, which are expected to finalise contracts within 8 to 12 weeks after the start of talks next month. Webuild, Mota-Engil SGPS and Türkiye’s IC Ictas are negotiating to build the section from Chingola in Zambia to its border with Angola. Mota-Engil and Odebrecht, a unit of Novonor, are in talks about the section from the border to Luacano in Angola.

The overall project, which will run about 1 739 km from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s city of Kolwezi to Angola’s Lobito port, has been financially backed by the US as it will significantly reduce transport times for critical minerals being exported to Western markets. It’s seen as a key plank of the US’s drive to counter China’s control of much of Africa’s production of minerals seen as critical to the energy transition.

“This is a significant step toward delivery,” Samaila Zubairu, president and CEO of the AFC, said in an interview. “It’s not going to be longer than six to eight months for us to start construction,” he said, declining to say how much the cost of the contracts would be.

The greenfield rail line is also expected to spur economic activity along its length, including value addition to the minerals and to foster the production of agricultural products, the AFC said in a statement.

“What we want to do is build infrastructure that will support the growth of African production,” Zubairu said. “We want African resources matched or tied to African producers, to African consumers and to global consumers as well.”

Congo and Zambia are Africa’s biggest copper producers and Congo is also the world’s biggest supplier of battery material cobalt.

Mota-Engil is also part of groups that will build the rest of the rail line.