The 27 tonnes of copper slabs are securely lashed down on the back of Omar Rachidi’s tractor trailer. All he has to do is drive the cargo to its destination, but that is easier said than done.
Two thousand kilometers of road lie between the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DR Congo) southeast mineral belt and the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, from where the copper is shipped to Asia.
The trip is hard work.
“Sometimes it takes two weeks to do the trip,” Rachidi, a 57-year-old Tanzanian, said at the Chemical of Africa (Chemaf) metal processing plant at Lubumbashi in Haut-Katanga Province. “There are lots of lines and lots of tolls — lots of waiting at the border.”
The DR Congo is the world’s biggest producer of cobalt — the key ingredient in modern batteries — and Africa’s biggest producer of copper. The highway is the crucial, but slender link in getting that wealth to the global market.
On Rachidi’s truck, the copper plates are loaded in bundles that weigh 2.3 tonnes each.
Each one is chained down “to prevent theft,” Chemaf copper manager Eric Tshinkobo said.
With copper reaching about US$10,000 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange, the vehicle is hauling a load valued at more than US$250,000.
“Robbers attack us, especially on the road that goes around Lubumbashi,” Katema said.
Jacob Daoudi, 45, another Tanzanian trucker who is hauling 30 tonnes of cobalt hydroxide, said that the 80km to the Zambian border is fraught with risk.
“Bandits attack us. They rip the tarps. They grab our money,” he said.
Attacks have become so bad that an increasing number of trucking companies use a system of advance payment to cover road tolls on the DR Congo part of the trip, rather than have truckers carry a large amount of cash.
Six toll stations dot the 400km on National Highway 1 from Kolwezi in Lualaba Province to Kasumbalesa on the border with Zambia.
The lines there are notorious.
Lambert Tshisueka Mutondo, president of the federation of international freight companies in Haut-Katanga, said the tolls “impede traffic flow and profitability.”
He wants more police patrols to dissuade robbers and for the number of toll stations to be cut in half.
Trucks pay about US$500 to cover the 400km, which makes a round trip to Dar es Salaam cost US$1,000 just in tolls.
The money goes to a Chinese firm that, under a contract with the state, builds and maintains roads — an arrangement that routinely draws flak.
National Highway 1 is smooth pavement, which makes it more pleasureable to drive on than the DR Congo’s typically pot-holed roads.
However, it only has two lanes, one in each direction — the country has no motorway.
At Kanyaka, halfway between Lubumbashi and the Zambian border, more than 200 trucks are waiting to get through a toll booth.
Truckers said that driving in Zambia and Tanzania is far from perfect, but the tolls there are far lower than in the DR Congo, and the lines and paperwork less onerous.
“There are hassles all the time in the DR Congo,” said Maniasi Djuma Makweba, 50, who was heading to Dar es Salaam with 35 tonnes of cobalt that he loaded at Tenke Fungurume Mining SA, in the heart of the mineral belt.
Like other drivers, he complained about the thieves, but also about the security forces.
“When you go to the police to declare a robbery, they start by wanting to shake you down” for a bribe, he said.
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