Luanda, July 21, 2026 (Lusa) - Angola's Secretary of State for Planning, Luís Epalanga, said on Tuesday that the Lobito Corridor must be a «development corridor», representing a «historic opportunity to accelerate Angola's economic transition».
«The Lobito Corridor is not just an infrastructure project; the vision is more ambitious – it is a development corridor designed to boost agriculture, strengthen agri-industry and manufacturing, logistics platforms and the digital economy, and accelerate the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises,» said the minister.
Speaking at the launch of the report on Angola's economy, presented this morning by the World Bank at a university in Luanda under the title «The Lobito Corridor: from transit to transformation: a driver of economic diversification and regional integration», Epalanga reviewed the country's macroeconomic indicators and argued that the construction of a corridor, in itself, is not enough.
«Infrastructure alone does not bring about transformation; it depends on the quality of institutions, human capital, access to finance, regional coordination and a competitive, transparent and predictable business environment,» he stated.
The route linking Zambia to the port of Lobito must be transformed, moving «from a logistics route to a genuine freight corridor; it is not just about the movement of goods, but a platform for regional integration, industrialisation, food security, energy transition and territorial inclusion», said the minister.
The World Bank forecasts that Angola will grow by an average of 2.7% until 2028, below the population growth rate of 3.1%, saying that the launch of the Lobito Corridor is essential to ensure «the necessary and urgent» economic diversification.
«Growth is expected to remain modest in the medium term, averaging 2.7% between 2026 and 2028, driven mainly by the non-oil economy; with the continued decline in per capita income, the poverty rate is expected to remain high, with approximately four in every 10 people remaining in poverty until 2027», according to the Angola Economic Report, released today in Luanda, which highlights that growth in recent years «has not been sufficient to reverse 15 years of decline in per capita income».
In the document, the World Bank warned that this corridor, which connects the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia by rail to the Angolan coast at the port of Lobito, is crucial to enabling economic diversification beyond oil.
‘The development of the Lobito Corridor offers a unique, transformative opportunity to accelerate Angola's economic diversification through improved connectivity, reduced logistics costs and the attraction of investment outside the extractive sector and urban centres. However, realising this potential depends more on institutional reforms than on infrastructure investment,' according to the document.
In the report on Angola's economy, presented today by the world's largest multilateral financial institution, it is emphasised that «non-oil sectors, supported by ongoing structural reforms, particularly agriculture, are expected to lead economic growth, whilst oil production continues to decline» and it forecasts that public debt will fall to 49.1% of GDP by 2027.
«Falling incomes, rising prices and heavy dependence on an increasingly dwindling resource underscore the fact that Angola needs to diversify its economy, and urgently; Angola's heavy dependence on oil creates a cycle of economic instability that has hampered the development of non-oil sectors and, as a result, the country is unable to generate widespread productivity gains or sufficient fiscal resources to invest significantly in improving the lives of its people», the World Bank said.
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