The world is scrambling for Zambia’s critical minerals, with Canadian miners at the forefront
Jamie Kneen
The world is scrambling for Zambia’s critical minerals, with Canadian miners at the forefront
Soaring copper demand has turned Zambia and its neighbours into prime territory for global competition
The train pulls into the station with an ear-splitting shriek of metal. Then it sits empty for hours as its workers search for fuel. Its windows are grimy and broken, propped open with plastic bottles. The vast waiting hall nearby is stained brown from water leaks.
The Chinese-built TAZARA railway, running 1,860 kilometres from Zambia’s copper belt to Tanzania’s main seaport, was once just a relic of the Cold War. The railway is a half-century old and decaying badly, with its trains often suspended or painfully slow.
But as the world scrambles for access to the critical minerals of Zambia and Congo, the shabby old railway has suddenly become vital to Beijing’s economic strategy – and could be a future boon for Canadian miners.
The battle for Africa’s critical minerals
Rival railways into the copper belt of Zambia and Congo
Lobito
Corridor
railway
Proposed
spur into
Zambia
Canadian-owned copper mines in Zambia and Congo
FQM
Trident
mine
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCE
the globe and mail
In November, China launched a US$1.4-billion project to modernize the TAZARA railway, aiming to bring copper faster to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam and onward to China’s insatiable factories. It is just one of several rival schemes in the region: railways, roads and ports to serve the fast-growing mines owned by Canadian, Asian, Middle Eastern and U.S. investors.
Soaring copper demand and record prices have turned Zambia and its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, into prime territory for global competition. The battle to secure copper and other critical minerals has swiftly become a key focus for U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and others, including the G7 and G20 leaders who listed critical minerals as a top priority at their latest summits.
The urgency has only increased in recent weeks. From Venezuela to Greenland, the Trump administration is making it clear that access to resources is driving its push to reorder the world. In Africa, this is playing out against a complex map of geopolitical partners and rivals.
Even as China and Zambia were breaking ground on the ambitious TAZARA upgrade, the United States and the European Union were backing a competing scheme: the multibillion-dollar Lobito Corridor railway, stretching westward from southern Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean, to bring copper to Western markets. A branch line to reach the Zambian copper mines is also planned.
“Nobody wants to be locked out of these critical minerals,” says Kakenenwa Muyangwa, chief executive officer of ZCCM Investment Holdings PLC, the state-controlled company that holds minority stakes in many of Zambia’s biggest mines.
“They’re jostling to have a seat at the table. But we’re happy to work with all these people. It’s all great news for Zambia.”
Two big Canadian miners in the northwest of the country, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (FQM)
FQM and Barrick have both recently launched major expansion projects in Zambia, with FQM completing a US$1.25-billion expansion this year. A recent visit by The Globe and Mail to the huge Kansanshi copper mine showed that FQM is moving fast to extend its operations – helping it replace the lost production from its giant Cobre Panama mine in Panama, which remains shuttered in the aftermath of local protests over its environmental impact.
Barrick, meanwhile, is spending US$2-billion to double the output of its Lumwana copper mine, just 100 kilometres west of Kansanshi in the same underdeveloped region of northwestern Zambia.
As the tussle for Zambian copper gains momentum, the Canadian companies are just two of the global players flocking into the country. Zambia has become a favourite target for critical-minerals investors whose headquarters range from California and Abu Dhabi to Mumbai and Beijing.
The Zambian government, revelling in the global spotlight, is aiming to boost the country’s copper production to three million tonnes annually by 2031 – a target that would triple its 2025 output. Add an expected six million tonnes of copper a year from Congo, and the roads and railways will become crucial.
Miners in both countries face daunting obstacles just to get their products to market. “All of it has only one way out,” Mr. Muyangwa says, referring to the roads running south from the Congolese and Zambian copper belt to the national capital, Lusaka, and onward to South Africa and Namibia.
Zambia’s national railways are theoretically an option, but they are so slow that a train can take up to three days to travel the 800-kilometre distance between the southern border and the copper belt town of Kitwe. And with the Lobito and TAZARA railways currently taking only a tiny fraction of mining cargo, Zambia’s badly potholed roads are still the main option.
Chinese and Zambian trucks, filled with copper products and mining supplies, clog the dusty roads all day and into the night, creating huge traffic jams and queues on the routes to the borders. Zambians still recall what happened when the Congo border was briefly closed a couple of years ago: Trucks were parked along the road for an astonishing 250 kilometres as they awaited the reopening.
It gets worse. The traditional export route from Zambia to the South African port of Durban is increasingly dangerous because of ruthless hijacking gangs that steal the copper – even when the trucks are guarded by armed escorts. “They are more armed than you’ll ever be,” sighs Anthony Mukutuma, FQM’s country director in Zambia.
Satellite monitoring of the truck convoys in South Africa has failed to protect them from the hijackers, and some miners are pulling back from the route. “We had a high tolerance, but it got out of hand, so we had to retreat,” said Godwin Beene, the Zambia country manager for FQM.
Mining investors are hoping that the TAZARA and Lobito upgrades will someday solve the chokepoints. “We need as many routes as possible,” Mr. Muyangwa told The Globe in his Lusaka office.
“The rate of expansion has probably overwhelmed the roads in Zambia,” he said. “We’ve suffered heavy road traffic for so many years, and the roads get damaged so often. We need to open up more corridors, so that we have connectivity with our neighbours.”
Zambia’s leaders try to spin it all positively: They argue that the country is “land-linked” rather than landlocked. And despite all the export headaches, global investors are increasingly descending on Zambia.
California-based KoBold Metals, backed by U.S. billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, is promoting its US$3-billion Mingomba copper project in Zambia near the Congo border. The company has promised to send 300,000 tonnes of copper annually on the Lobito railway if the branch line to Zambia is built.
Barely 90 kilometres to the south, a state-connected United Arab Emirates investment company paid US$1.1-billion for a majority stake in the Mopani copper mine last year. Not far away, Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal is sinking money into an expansion of his Konkola copper mine. And Chinese investors are everywhere in the country’s Copperbelt province – and in the board rooms of FQM, where Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd. now owns almost 19 per cent of the company’s shares.
In southern Congo, just across the border from Barrick and FQM, the massive Kamoa-Kakula copper mine has been developed by another Canadian-based company, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., with Chinese and Congolese partners. The project, which says it’s the world’s fastest-growing and highest-grade major copper mine, is already using the Lobito Corridor railway to ship some of its production to the Atlantic Ocean for export.
Ivanhoe is also moving into Zambia. It announced in 2024 that it had won exploration licences to seek copper in 7,757 square kilometres in northwestern Zambia, not far from the Barrick and FQM mines.
Barrick is spending US$2-billion to double the output of its Lumwana copper mine, just 100 kilometres west of Kansanshi in Zambia’s copper belt.Abbas Makke/Supplied
Almost every week, top players arrive in Zambia. Chinese Premier Li Qiang made a two-day visit in November to inaugurate the Chinese railway project. Donald Trump Jr., the son of the U.S. President, arrived in the same month and held a meeting with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. It was described as a private vacation, but Mr. Trump Jr. is known to have business interests related to the critical minerals sector.
In December, newly appointed U.S. assistant secretary of state Caleb Orr, visited Zambia to discuss a proposed US$2-billion package of support for Zambian health programs. He made it clear that the money was contingent on mineral deals. The U.S. funding would be “provided in exchange for collaboration in the mining sector and clear business sector reforms,” the State Department said.
Mr. Orr, complaining about a “slow, unpredictable, and opaque” business environment in Zambia, said the timing of the U.S. grants would be “based on clear progress in the coming months.”
Later in his trip, Mr. Orr visited FQM’s Kansanshi mine for a site tour, while the U.S. embassy explained that FQM could bolster the U.S. critical-minerals supply chain.
Separately, the Trump administration has been demanding that U.S. investors get preferential access to critical minerals in Congo, in exchange for Washington’s role in trying to broker a peace deal to settle a Rwanda-backed insurgency in eastern Congo. The administration announced in November that it had added copper to its list of critical minerals, giving added importance to Zambia and Congo.
A few weeks before Mr. Orr’s visit, meanwhile, an EU delegation had travelled across the copper belt, studying Zambia’s colonial-era railway to see if it could be upgraded to work with the Lobito Corridor. A giant EU billboard, on a busy street in the mining town of Kabwe, promotes the Lobito Corridor as a pillar of Europe’s “Global Gateway” strategy to build green infrastructure worldwide.
A billboard in the Zambian town of Kabwe promotes the Lobito Corridor, a railway project backed by the U.S. and Europe that runs from Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito, with a possible future spur to Zambia.Morgan Mbulo/The Globe and Mail
The EU announced in November that it would provide about US$58-million to help rehabilitate the Zambian railway and prepare it for integration into the Lobito Corridor. It also plans to mobilize US$2.3-billion to support the entire Lobito project.
The U.S., for its part, has been supporting Lobito for years with an estimated US$6-billion in public and private financing. Then president Joe Biden visited the Angolan port in 2024 to push for faster action on the corridor, and the Trump administration has extended that support. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp. announced in December that it will provide a loan of US$553-million to help upgrade 1,300 kilometres of the Lobito Corridor in Angola.
Zambia is eager for any help it can get. “There’s just not enough road and rail infrastructure to move the critical minerals that are going to come out of this part of the world, to the West and to the East,” says Mr. Mukutuma of FQM.
“For the mines in Zambia and Congo, probably 90 per cent of their inputs are coming through Lusaka, the heart of Zambia, and that’s a major risk,” he told The Globe.
“You can’t have nine million tonnes of copper coming out of this part of the world – and all the inputs, from fuel and reagents to explosives – on these roads. The solution is to get a lot of material onto rail. Once those corridors are in place, they will spur economic activity and bring more mines and industry.”
In late 2023, Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula mine became the first Congolese producer to send copper concentrate along the Lobito Corridor railway to the Atlantic Ocean. The rail route took only eight days, compared to 25 days for the road route to Durban, the company said.
Several weeks later, the Ivanhoe mine signed an agreement allowing it to send up to 240,000 tonnes of copper products annually on the Lobito Corridor.
It expected to export about 50,000 tonnes on the Lobito route in 2025, with transport times drastically shorter than conventional truck routes, according to Alex Pickard, executive vice-president of corporate development at Ivanhoe.
“For the mining sector, this project has huge importance,” he told an online discussion in September.
While the Lobito Corridor is already benefiting some miners in Congo, its potential spur into Zambia is less certain. The lead developer, Africa Finance Corp., has asked for proposals from contractors, but no timing has been announced, and its exact route is unclear, although it would terminate somewhere in the copper belt. The 800-kilometre spur would cost an estimated US$4.5-billion, of which less than one-fifth has been raised so far.
Mining investors are watching impatiently. “If you asked me, they should have started it yesterday,” said Mr. Beene, the FQM country manager. “It’s a virgin railway, and it’s still a long way off.”
In the meantime, the focus is switching to the TAZARA railway. Unlike the Lobito spur to Zambia, the Chinese project would not require construction of new tracks in virgin territory, but merely the modernization of an existing line – albeit one of the longest railways in Africa.
After decades of decay, the TAZARA trains chug along slowly at a stately 50 kilometres per hour, carrying just 100,000 tonnes of freight annually. Companies such as FQM are legally required to ship some of their product by rail, so they use TAZARA – but they complain that it is sluggish and unreliable.
“You never know if it will break down halfway,” said Axel Koettgen, assistant general manager of the Kansanshi mine.
When The Globe bought a second-class ticket on one of TAZARA’s weekly passenger runs in December, the railway’s antiquated operations were conspicuous. Tickets were written laboriously by hand. Porters loaded old furniture and sacks of cassava into a freight car. The train’s departure from the Kapiri Mposhi terminus – a lengthy process that involved sirens, alarm bells and whistles – was three hours behind schedule.
“We don’t know what is happening,” said Geoffrey Siame, a 73-year-old former TAZARA worker who was using his pensioner pass to ride the rail line. “The tracks, the equipment, the locomotives – none of them are up to date.”
Mr. Siame, who worked for TAZARA for 30 years, still remembers the excitement in 1976 when the railway was completed and service began. It was a monumental achievement, involving the labour of 50,000 Chinese workers and 60,000 Africans over six years. More than 160 workers died in construction accidents, often in remote wilderness. Lions, hyenas and bee stings were a constant threat.
The modernization project will seek to revive TAZARA’s old glories. China plans to rehabilitate stations, repair bridges and tunnels, replace the rail sleepers along the entire line, add new locomotives and build 390 kilometres of new track.
The project is expected to cut transit times by two-thirds and boost the railway’s freight volume to 2.4 million tonnes annually.
While it is often seen as a rival to the Western-backed Lobito option, TAZARA could also be a partner to it. If Zambia upgrades its domestic railway with the EU’s promised help, cargo could someday be transferred between the TAZARA and Lobito lines, creating a cross-continental land bridge between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Unlocking the export obstacles would be a crucial boost to Zambia’s future. But the copper boom is already fuelling rapid growth. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Zambia’s economy will grow by 6.4 per cent in 2026, making it one of the 10 fastest-rising countries on the continent.
FQM is playing a major role in Zambia’s growth. It is the biggest single private investor and taxpayer in the country, and it produces almost half of Zambia’s annual copper output, the company says.
At FQM’s Kansanshi mine, the long-planned expansion was completed in August, sharply boosting the capacity of its processing plant and its smelter. The mine is expected to produce an average of about 250,000 tonnes of copper annually over the next 18 years, its projected lifespan, compared to 171,000 tonnes in 2024.
In August, after strengthening its balance sheet by striking a US$1-billion deal to sell some of its gold production to U.S.-based Royal Gold Inc., the company announced that it had shelved a plan to sell minority stakes in its Zambian mines.
The Sentinel processing plant at FQM’s Trident project. The company is playing a major role in Zambia’s growth as the biggest single private investor and taxpayer in the country, according to FQM.Alexander Arosemena/The Globe and Mail
After the shutdown of its Panama mine, the Zambian mines now generate more than 90 per cent of FQM’s production. The company hopes that Panama’s government will authorize the mine’s reopening within the next few months. To bolster its case, it flew a group of Panamanian television and print reporters to Zambia in late November, aiming to showcase the social and community benefits of its mines.
“We invited them, they came and we’re very grateful,” said James Devas, FQM’s corporate affairs manager. “Our reputation in Panama is not where it should be. We didn’t communicate broadly enough to the Panamanian people.”
The growth of the FQM and Barrick mines in Zambia are part of a larger shift from the old copper belt to a newly emerging sector in North-Western province. For decades, the province has been underdeveloped. Its sense of marginalization fuelled grievances that sparked a local rebellion from 1976 to 1990, which in turn led to military clashes that further damaged its economy and its social development.
Much of the province remains heavily forested today. Its infrastructure is poor, and its literacy rates are among the lowest in the country. But mining exploration is accelerating, and the government is building new border posts to link it more closely to Congo’s mining belt. The province could become one of Africa’s key mining crossroads: connecting north to Congo, west to Angola and Namibia, and west to Tanzania.
For decades, miners were deterred from North-Western province – not only because of its isolation, but also because its copper grades were far lower than in the copper belt. Improved technology has allowed FQM to make these lower grades profitable, but it also requires much bigger volumes of waste rock. “The only way to make sense of it is large-scale and massive volumes per day,” Mr. Muyangwa said.
As the copper grades at some of its Zambian deposits fall below 0.5 per cent and continue to decline, FQM has introduced new technology to make the mines more cost-efficient.
It runs one of the world’s biggest fleets of 220-tonne diesel-electric dump trucks, which can switch to overhead power lines – almost like a Toronto streetcar – to double their speed on the ramps leading up from the pit. The system, known as trolley assist, cuts their diesel consumption by 90 per cent and allows big cost savings.
At Kansanshi, the company has already installed 14 kilometres of power lines for its 80 trolley-assisted trucks, and it plans to expand to 20 kilometres this year.
The company is also testing the world’s first ultralarge battery-powered mining truck, built by Hitachi Construction Machinery, which uses the overhead electricity cables to recharge its giant battery. The Japanese company chose Kansanshi for the trial because of its extensive electricity lines, and because of its smooth roads, which ensure that the truck won’t be jostled loose from the power lines.
“You need to be innovative, to get your costs down and make your operations profitable – otherwise you won’t be able to operate at those low copper grades,” Mr. Mukutuma says. “That’s really driven a lot of the work we’ve done.”
In another innovation, FQM has built one of the world’s first rail-run conveyor belts, using small carts on wheels, instead of conventional fixed rollers. It has reduced energy consumption by up to 80 per cent, Mr. Mukutuma says.
While those technical fixes have boosted efficiency, they don’t alter a fundamental reality: FQM needs electricity, and Zambia’s supply is badly constrained. The country depends on hydro power, primarily from the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River, but frequent droughts have slashed the dam’s power production, leaving the mines scrambling to respond.
A decade ago, during a severe drought, Zambia’s electricity monopoly ordered the miners to cut their energy use by 20 per cent. It led to layoffs and cuts in copper production.
Drought returned again in 2024, but this time the mining companies were allowed to buy power from private power-trading suppliers, including South African and Mozambican companies. By November, FQM was buying 90 per cent of its electricity from foreign suppliers.
Electricity poles follow the road leading to the Kansanshi mine. Though FQM has boosted efficiency, its mining operations require a lot of electricity, and Zambia’s supply is badly constrained.Alexander Arosemena/The Globe and Mail
Longer-term, those private deals might not always be available – and they don’t provide much help to the millions of ordinary Zambians who endure power rationing for up to 20 hours a day. So the Zambian government is hastily trying to develop new energy sources. By 2030, it wants the country to get at least 30 per cent of its energy from non-hydro renewable sources, especially solar.
Canada is already helping in the quest for renewables. In 2024, Zambia signed a deal with Toronto-based SkyPower Global to supply the country with 1,000 megawatts of solar energy – enough to provide electricity to four million Zambian homes.
Chinese and Turkish companies have also spent heavily in solar projects in Zambia – much of it intended for mining companies such as FQM.
China has invested a total of about US$6-billion in Zambia’s economy over the past two decades, and it boasts that the TAZARA upgrade will create a “Prosperity Belt” for the country. It recently entrenched its economic influence in Zambia by winning agreement for its mining companies to pay their royalties and taxes in yuan, the Chinese currency.
The Trump administration is fighting back. On the same day the Chinese premier was in Zambia to inaugurate the TAZARA project, U.S. diplomats posted a mischievous message on their social media accounts, recalling that Washington had provided US$45-million to help procure locomotives for the Chinese-built railway in the 1980s. The American aid had rescued a railway that was degraded by “poor quality and cutting of corners in project delivery,” the diplomats said.
For the Canadian miners in Zambia, the competition between the superpowers simply reinforces the impression that the world is beating a path to their door.
“When people are fighting over you,” Mr. Koettgen says, “it makes this an interesting place.”
Upcoming: the hazards of life in one of the world’s most mining-dependent countries.
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