Anne spoke with Newsweek about the potential for the Lobito Corridor to increase Angola's ability to participate in the energy transition and what rail upgrades could mean for African critical minerals. Brief excerpts are included below and the entire article by Arick Wierson can be found in Newsweek.
Africa's Angola Holds the Keys to Ushering In Global Green Economy | Opinion by Arick Wierson
President Joe Biden has a full plate when it comes to foreign affairs—many of which are giving him more heartburn than he would ideally prefer heading into a tightly contested bid for re-election. But there is one under-the-radar project that his administration has pushed that could likely end up becoming his signature foreign policy legacy for decades to come—the Lobito Corridor. It's a multibillion dollar railway investment that connects central and southern Africa to a deep-water port in Angola that will become a pivotal piece of the supply chain fueling the expected $10 trillion global clean energy economy.
Named after a port city on the coast of Angola, the Lobito Corridor will eventually connect mining operations in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with an ocean outlet on the west coast of Africa from which these key raw materials can then be shipped to global markets. These mines, which hold vast deposits of cobalt, copper, lithium, and other critical minerals needed for making EV batteries and other high-tech components and hardware, are currently held back by an incredibly onerous logistics route that forces operators to truck minerals over thousand of miles of oftentimes dangerous terrain and even conflict zones before arriving at port—a logistics dynamic that increases costs, limits global supply, and wreaks havoc on the environment....
Potential of the Lobito Corridor
...Anne Clawson, a principal at Cascade Advisory, a Washington, D.C.,-based consultancy that advises companies in green technology and clean energy, goes even a step further. She believes that the Lobito Corridor really places Angola in a globally strategic position on the world's fastest growing continent.
"It's one thing to have oil reserves, but as the world slowly but surely starts to migrate away from carbon-based power solutions, being a gatekeeper to the biggest channel of goods in and out of the heart of Africa is far more valuable. Not only will the Lobito Corridor catapult Angola's standing onto the international stage, as a major entrepôt in the critical minerals supply chain, Angola will soon realize that it is a significant player in the soon-to-be multi trillion-dollar clean energy economy," she said.
Comments