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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS