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In parts of Africa, railways are being rehabilitated, ports are expanding, power lines are stretching across borders, and industrial corridors, once stalled by finance and politics, are re-entering development plans with renewed urgency.
From the outside, this looks like progress. And in many respects, it is. But infrastructure is only the first layer of value creation. The second, and far more decisive layer sits in contracts: the offtake terms, pricing formulas, take-or-pay clauses, currency provisions, and governance arrangements that determine who captures value once the corridor is built.
This is where Africa repeatedly loses ground. The continent is increasingly capable of mobilising finance for infrastructure. Yet it remains consistently weak at negotiating the commercial architecture that follows. The result is a familiar paradox: Africa wins the corridor, but loses the economics.
Corridors are not value by default
Industrial and minerals corridors are often presented as self-evident development tools. Build the railway, connect the port, extend power, and value will follow. In practice, corridors are neutral infrastructure. They do not determine outcomes on their own, but contracts do.
A corridor can:
- anchor industrialisation and processing, or
- lock in raw-material exports with limited fiscal return.
The difference lies in commercial design. This distinction matters because Africa’s current corridor push is unfolding amid intensifying global competition for minerals, fragmented climate finance, and rising geopolitical pressure.
The Lobito lesson: infrastructure success, commercial uncertainty
The Lobito Corridor, linking Angola’s Atlantic port to copper and cobalt belts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, has become a flagship example of corridor diplomacy.
Backed by Western governments seeking to diversify mineral supply chains, Lobito represents a rare alignment of capital, politics, and infrastructure ambition.
Yet the central question remains unresolved: on what terms will minerals move along this corridor? Reports on DRC’s engagement with US investors show a strong focus on asset access and logistics, but limited clarity on:
- processing commitments,
- pricing benchmarks,
- or long-term value capture mechanisms.
Without coordinated contract standards, the corridor risks becoming an efficient export channel, rather than an industrial spine.
Where value is actually decided: contracts, not corridors
Three contractual mechanisms quietly determine whether Africa captures value or exports it.
1. Offtake agreements
Offtake contracts define who buys the output, at what price, and under what conditions. In many African mineral projects, offtake is secured early, often as a condition for finance.
The problem is asymmetry. Buyers typically:
- lock in long-term supply at formula-based prices;
- retain optionality on volumes;
- and secure priority access during market tightness.
Producers, by contrast, accept stability at the cost of upside. When offtake is negotiated project-by-project, countries compete against each other. But when negotiated within a corridor strategy, leverage increases, and Africa has largely chosen the former.
2. Pricing formulas and benchmarks
Many African mineral exports are priced against international benchmarks that:
- reflect processing elsewhere,
- ignore local cost structures,
- and transmit volatility directly to public revenues.
The International Energy Agency has warned that most value in clean-energy supply chains accrues downstream, in refining, processing, and manufacturing. So, corridors that move raw material faster, without changing pricing structure, accelerate value leakage.
3. Take-or-pay and currency clauses
Take-or-pay clauses, common in infrastructure and minerals contracts, guarantee buyers supply or compensation, even when systems fail. When combined with foreign-currency pricing, they shift risk decisively onto African utilities and treasuries. This matters for power-linked corridors, where grid instability can trigger penalties rather than flexibility.
Why Africa wins infrastructure finance but loses leverage
Africa’s infrastructure success isn’t accidental. It reflects three strengths:
- willingness to offer sovereign guarantees;
- openness to export-credit and bilateral finance;
- political prioritisation of visible assets.
Commercial leverage, however, is eroded by three weaknesses.
1. Fragmented negotiation capacity
Most corridor-linked contracts are negotiated by:
- individual ministries,
- project SPVs,
- or state-owned enterprises.
There is rarely a central commercial strategy aligning mining, energy, trade, and finance objectives.
2. Urgency bias
Infrastructure finance is often time-bound. Deals are framed as “now or never”, commercial terms are accepted to secure construction, with the assumption that renegotiation can happen later, but it rarely does.
3. Absence of shared red lines
Unlike oil-producing regions that developed common fiscal and contractual norms, African mineral producers largely negotiate in isolation. This weakens collective leverage even when interests align.
A contrast in power-sector reform: Ghana’s signal
The experience of Ghana illustrates a point often missed in corridor debates: credibility is itself economic infrastructure. In January 2026, Ghana cleared $1.47 billion in energy-sector arrears, addressing long-standing payment backlogs that had undermined confidence in utilities and state counterparties.
This decision didn’t lay a single kilometre of track or add a megawatt of capacity, yet its impact on investment conditions was immediate. By confronting arrears, Ghana restored a basic but critical signal: contracts will be honoured, and losses will not be indefinitely socialised through delay.
For corridor-linked investments, whether in minerals, logistics, or processing, this signal matters as much as physical infrastructure. Offtakers, financiers, and processors price not only transport efficiency, but counterparty risk. Where utilities and public entities lack payment discipline, downstream investment terms harden. Prices are discounted, guarantees multiply, and optionality shifts away from the host country.
Corridors without credible counterparties struggle to deliver value. They move material efficiently, but they do so on terms that reflect distrust.
Mini-grids, processing, and early value capture
One of the most underused levers in Africa’s corridor strategy is decentralised power as an industrial enabler, not merely an access solution.
Mini-grids and hybrid systems can anchor:
- early-stage mineral processing,
- logistics hubs and cold chains, and
- industrial parks and service zones
long before national grids arrive or stabilise.
This is particularly relevant in mineral-rich, but infrastructure-poor regions where waiting for full grid extension can delay value capture for a decade or more. In such contexts, decentralised power is not a stopgap; it is a sequencing tool.
The logic is cumulative. Power enables processing, processing improves pricing power, and pricing power reshapes contracts. Where early processing is possible, even at a modest scale, offtake negotiations shift. Export of raw material becomes one option among several, rather than the default. Corridors then serve industry, not just extraction.
The cost of getting this wrong
If Africa fails to integrate corridors into a coherent commercial and industrial strategy, three risks intensify.
Exporting volatility, importing dependency: When raw materials are exported without downstream integration, African economies absorb price volatility while importing finished goods at higher and more stable margins. Fiscal revenues swing with global cycles, while industrial learning and job creation remain offshore. Corridors accelerate this imbalance if they are not paired with value-addition conditions.
Energy poverty alongside extraction: Mining regions often sit atop immense resource wealth while remaining underpowered and underserved. When corridors prioritise export efficiency over local power and processing, they entrench a political contradiction: extraction without development.
Over time, this fuels social grievance, local resistance, and regulatory instability, raising risk premiums for future investment.
Contractual lock-in: Long-term offtake agreements and take-or-pay clauses negotiated under today’s conditions can outlive tomorrow’s markets. As technologies evolve and demand patterns shift, inflexible contracts constrain policy space and limit the ability to renegotiate terms. What begins as stability becomes constraint.
Green extractivism is not only unjust, but it is also unstable.
What a contract-led corridor strategy looks like
A credible alternative doesn’t reject corridors; it completes them. A contract-led corridor strategy would include several core elements.
First, corridor-wide offtake principles, rather than isolated project deals. Shared expectations on duration, pricing flexibility, and domestic supply obligations reduce destructive competition among producers.
Second, minimum processing thresholds tied to infrastructure access. Preferential access to rail, ports, and power should be conditional on incremental value addition, not merely volume.
Third, shared pricing benchmarks that reward processing and upgrading, rather than locking producers into formulas that reflect offshore cost structures.
Fourth, power-first planning for industrial nodes. Processing and manufacturing cannot be retrofitted onto weak systems. Power must be planned as industrial infrastructure, not as an afterthought.
The African Union’s push for a Green Minerals Strategy signals recognition of these issues. But recognition isn’t enough; strategy must translate into model contracts, negotiation support, and enforcement capacity if it is to shift outcomes on the ground.
Conclusion — steel builds corridors, contracts build economies
Africa is no longer failing at infrastructure ambition; it is failing at commercial follow-through.
Corridors are necessary. They reduce costs, unlock regions, and integrate markets. But without a disciplined contract strategy, they simply move raw materials faster, on terms set elsewhere.
The next phase of Africa’s transition won’t be decided by who builds the most railways or ports, but by who negotiates the most credible, adaptable, and future-proof commercial terms.
The lesson is simple, but uncomfortable: infrastructure creates possibilities; contracts determine outcomes. And it is at the level of contracts, not corridors, that Africa’s leverage is most often lost.
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