North-Western Railways (NWR) has agreed a $250 million financing package with lenders from Britain, South Africa and United States to build a rail link in a copper mining region, its chairman said on Tuesday.
Enoch Kavindele said NWR would receive funds from investors and lenders in the three countries to construct a railway line that will eventually link Zambia and Angola’s Benguela railways.
Kavindele said the railway line will initially link the Lumwana Copper mine in the new mining town of Solwezi, northwest of the capital Lusaka, to the Copper Belt town of Chingola to enable the copper mines to use it for carrying copper and cobalt.
Kavindele said an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was currently being done by a South African firm and construction work would start as soon as it was completed.
“We have finally secured the $250 million needed for the railway project. Our financiers, mostly from the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa will get the project started once the EIA is completed,” Kavindele told journalists, giving no further details.
Kavindele said NWR has since appointed Nedbank Capital of South Africa as its financial advisor.
The project had initially drawn the interest of some Chinese investors who later withdrew, Kavindele said.
“The Chinese also had agreed to finance this project. However, their conditions were onerous in that they wanted a guarantee by the Zambian government. As this is a private project, we opted for other investors coming in individually and through loans,” Kavindele said.
Kavindele, a former Zambian vice president, also disclosed that he had received a grant of about $1.4 million from South Africa’s Capital Equipment and Allied Services (CEAS) to complete the design of the railway project.
Kavindele said the $1.4 million grant was given to NWR on the understanding that 60 per cent of the technical services for the project would be imported from South Africa as recommended by the financiers.
Kavindele said NWR last week signed a consultancy agreement with South Africa’s Kwezi V3 Engineers and DB International of Germany for the rail project.