Written by Amelia Grant
A flagship rail project backed by the United States and European Union to speed “critical minerals” from central Africa to global markets is facing mounting criticism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where thousands of people fear they could be pushed out of their homes with little warning and even less compensation.
The concerns centre on the Lobito Corridor, an ambitious plan to modernise the old Benguela railway from the copper and cobalt belt of southern DRC through Zambia to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola. A new investigation by Global Witness, first reported by The Guardian, warns that as many as 6,500 people living along the tracks in the mining city of Kolwezi could ultimately be displaced as work accelerates.
Decades on the tracks, now labelled “illegal”
In Kolwezi’s Bel Air neighbourhood, rows of self-built homes, workshops and street stalls press close to a railway that, until recently, was largely dormant. Many residents say they moved to the area 10, 20 or even 30 years ago, investing scarce savings to build in what they believed was safe urban land.
Today, those same families are being told they are too close to the tracks. Disputes over the size of the safety buffer — some officials citing 10 metres, others 25 — have left residents in limbo. In interviews with local civil-society groups, people describe living with a packed bag by the door, unsure when a demolition order might arrive or bulldozers return to their street.
Community leaders argue that if authorities allowed settlement for decades, it is unjust to suddenly classify long-term residents as “illegal occupants” because a new export corridor has become strategically important to richer nations.
Strategic corridor, local sacrifice
For Washington and Brussels, the Lobito Corridor is a centrepiece of efforts to secure supplies of copper, cobalt and other minerals deemed vital for electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy technologies. The project is promoted as a cleaner, rules-based alternative to existing supply chains and a model of “sustainable connectivity”.
For many people in the DRC, however, the project risks looking like a familiar story: raw materials destined for foreign factories, while the communities living closest to the mines and rail lines carry the social and environmental costs.
Some residents do see hope in the corridor. A small but vocal group of traders and workers in Kolwezi say better rail links could cut transport costs, open up markets and bring long-promised jobs — if local people are genuinely prioritised for employment and if proper safeguards are enforced.
The controversy around the Lobito Corridor is also unfolding against a wider backdrop of debates in the US and Europe over who bears the cost of global crises, from climate change to migration. Recent political rhetoric targeting Somali immigrants and calling for tougher deportations and immigration freezes has raised fresh questions about whose rights are protected in this new era of great-power competition over resources and how vulnerable communities are treated when powerful states pursue hardline agendas.
Calls for safeguards, fairness and transparency
Global Witness and Congolese rights groups are urging the governments and companies involved to publish full social and environmental impact assessments before any evictions take place, guarantee fair compensation, and offer alternative housing or land to affected families.
They also want clear, written commitments that nobody will be removed by force, and that any relocation will be negotiated with communities rather than decided behind closed doors in foreign capitals or boardrooms.
On paper, the DRC government presents itself as keen to attract investment that supports national development. The official state portal, republique.cd, highlights the country’s drive to modernise infrastructure, improve governance and move up the value chain. Civil-society actors say the Lobito Corridor will be a key test of whether those ambitions can be reconciled with the rights of citizens whose lives are directly in the path of new projects.
A test case for the “just transition”
The controversy in Kolwezi goes beyond a single railway line. It cuts to the heart of the global energy transition: can powerful economies secure the minerals they need for climate goals without repeating the extractive patterns that have long impoverished resource-rich countries like the DRC?
For families in Bel Air, the issue is painfully concrete. They are not debating supply chains or geopolitical strategy. They are asking whether the house they built, the school their children walk to, and the small business that feeds their family will still exist when the next phase of construction begins.
As pressure grows on the US, EU and Congolese authorities to respond to the new findings, residents say they want something very basic: to be heard early, not informed late; to share in the benefits of development, not be pushed aside for it.
Whether those demands are met will determine if the Lobito Corridor is remembered as a showcase for a fairer green transition — or another chapter in a long history of promises made to Congo, and communities left behind.
