Four countries agree to extend the Nacala railway 2,400km to the DRC

Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a ministerial declaration on 19 December 2025 committing to extend the Nacala railway corridor by roughly 2,400 kilometres, creating a new rail link from Chipata in Zambia, through Malawi and Mozambique, to Serege in the DRC. The declaration was signed at the 10th meeting of the Nacala Development Corridor Management Committee in Maputo.

Mozambique's Minister of Transport and Logistics, João Matlombe, said the extension represented "the path for the Port of Nacala to establish itself as a driver of regional integration and a catalyst for shared economic development," framing the project as an opportunity for the region "to show the world" what cooperation and economic development can achieve.

A new route for landlocked minerals

The Nacala corridor already carries coal from Mozambique's Tete province mines to the port of Nacala via a rail line built with backing from Vale and Mitsui. Extending the network deeper into Malawi, Zambia and the DRC would give copper, cobalt and other minerals from the DRC's Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces, and from eastern Zambia, an alternative route to the Indian Ocean that does not depend on the more congested Beira, Durban or Dar es Salaam corridors — or on the Lobito and TAZARA lines running the opposite way toward the Atlantic and further north on the Indian Ocean coast.

Ambition ahead of financing

The declaration commits the four governments to jointly mobilise funding and identify a strategic construction partner, with Matlombe indicating that a further agreement on selecting that partner was targeted for the first quarter of 2026. No financing has yet been secured for the roughly 2,400-kilometre extension, and the project remains at a far earlier stage than corridors like Lobito or TAZARA, which already have concessions, contractors and financing in place. For mining companies operating in the DRC's copperbelt and eastern Zambia, the Nacala extension is, for now, a statement of political intent rather than a financed project — but it adds a fourth serious contender to the list of corridors competing to move central Africa's minerals to the coast.

Sources

• Club of Mozambique: Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and DR Congo agree to extend Nacala Railway Corridor, 22 Dec 2025

Photo: The coastline at Nacala, Mozambique, home to the port anchoring the Nacala development corridor. Stig Nygaard from Copenhagen, Denmark, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.