Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Mombasa moved a record 45.45 million tonnes in 2025, including 15.88 million tonnes of transit cargo for inland countries.
Mombasa moved a record 45.45 million tonnes in 2025, including 15.88 million tonnes of transit cargo for inland countries. Dar es Salaam's transit cargo rose 17% to 14.61 million tonnes, and on the Atlantic, backers have committed $1.3 billion to a rail line from Zambia's Copperbelt to Lobito. This episode follows the three corridors competing for East and Central Africa's trade.
What we cover
Chapters
(0:00) Cold open
(0:22) The map
(0:43) Mombasa
(1:43) Dar es salaam
(2:46) Lobito
(4:01) What to watch
(4:33) The bottom line
Data and policy tracker: six.blackexecutivebrief.com
Watch the video edition on YouTube: The Black Executive Journal.
Partner with us: become a BEJ sponsor: www.blackexecutivebrief.com/sponsors
Sources
The Six is a Black Executive Journal series explaining the forces shaping the African Union's five regions and its Sixth Region, the global diaspora.
Africas Six Regions Explained
Nearly sixteen million tonnes. That is how much transit cargo passed through Kenya's port of Mombasa last year, bound for countries further inland. It was up almost twenty percent in a single year. And Mombasa is not the only port competing for it.
This is The Six, from The Black Executive Journal. Episode nine. The Corridors to the Sea.
Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Zambia have no coastline. Congo's mining provinces also ship through foreign ports. Three routes compete for that cargo: the Northern Corridor from Mombasa, the Central Corridor from Dar es Salaam, and, on the Atlantic, the Lobito Corridor through Angola.
Mombasa handled a record forty-five point four five million tonnes in 2025, up almost eleven percent. Container traffic passed two point one million twenty-foot units. More than a third of the port's cargo was transit, headed across Kenya's borders.
Uganda is the anchor customer. Kenya's port authority says Ugandan cargo is more than sixty-five percent of Mombasa's transit volume, about eleven million tonnes last year, up a quarter. By contrast, only about forty-eight thousand tonnes of Ugandan cargo went through Tanzanian ports.
The plan is to move more of that cargo by rail. In March, Kenya broke ground on a four-hundred-and-seventy-five-kilometre standard gauge extension from Naivasha to Malaba, on the Ugandan border. Construction began in July. Uganda's two-hundred-and-seventy-three-kilometre line from Malaba to Kampala, priced at two point seven billion euros, is due in 2028.
The challenger is Dar es Salaam. In Tanzania's 2025-26 financial year, the port handled thirty-three point seven million tonnes, up twenty-one and a half percent. Transit cargo rose seventeen percent, to fourteen point six million tonnes. More than half of it was bound for Congo.
Tanzania has spent on speed. DP World began running berths at the port's Terminal One in April 2024, under a thirty-year concession. Officials say ships waiting to berth fell from thirty-five to seventeen in two years. In February, trains began carrying containers on the new standard gauge line, about four hundred and twenty kilometres inland to Dodoma.
The competition shows up in Kenya's own estimates. Its East African Community department says Kenya loses five to eight percent of high-value transit cargo every year, mainly to Dar es Salaam, largely because of non-tariff barriers on the Northern Corridor. Rwanda's cargo through Dar rose twenty-four percent last year.
On the Atlantic side, the contest is for copper. Lobito Atlantic Railway, owned by Trafigura, Mota-Engil and Vecturis, holds a thirty-year concession, awarded in 2022, on the thirteen-hundred-kilometre Benguela line, from the port of Lobito to Luau, on the Congolese border.
Last December, the railway closed seven hundred and fifty-three million dollars of loans. Five hundred and fifty-three million came from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, two hundred million from the Development Bank of Southern Africa. The aim is a tenfold rise in capacity, to four point six million tonnes a year.
For now, volumes are small. The railway expects to carry about four hundred thousand tonnes of international cargo this year. Its best month on record, July, moved twenty-seven thousand.
The bigger prize is a new line into Zambia's Copperbelt, costed at up to five billion dollars. Backers have committed about one point three billion, and in August the African Development Bank approved a first loan of two hundred and fifty-five million. Financial close is targeted for late 2027, completion for 2030.
For executives, three signals matter. First, the railhead. Watch how fast Kenya's line reaches Malaba, and whether Uganda's section to Kampala keeps to its 2028 date.
Second, diversion. Watch Dar es Salaam's transit numbers, and Congo's share of them, against Mombasa's.
Third, the Atlantic route. Backers say the Zambia line needs two and a half to three million tonnes of cargo a year. In April, about one million was signed.
Three ports are competing for the same inland cargo. The contest is now being fought on rail.
For the data behind this story, and the full policy tracker, visit six dot black executive brief dot com. This has been The Six.