The LAR Concession: How a Swiss Trader Won Africa's Biggest Rail Deal
In 2022, the Angolan government awarded a 30-year concession to operate the Benguela Railway to Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR), a consortium comprising Swiss commodity trader Trafigura, Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil, and Belgian rail operator Vecturis. The concession covers the Angolan segment of the corridor — from the Port of Lobito to the DRC border at Luau — and grants the consortium exclusive rights to operate rail freight services, maintain infrastructure, and collect revenue.The concession award was significant for several reasons. It placed a major commodity trader at the heart of corridor logistics, creating potential conflicts of interest between Trafigura's trading operations and its role as an infrastructure operator serving all users. The 30-year duration locked in terms negotiated in 2022, before the full scale of corridor investment and traffic volumes became apparent. And the consortium's multinational composition — Swiss, Portuguese, Belgian — gave the concession a European character that aligned with the geopolitical narrative of Western alternative infrastructure.
The DFC's subsequent financing, which substantially de-risked the consortium's investment, raised additional questions about the distribution of risk and reward. Public financing from the DFC and EIB reduces the consortium's capital exposure while leaving revenue collection rights largely intact.
Our detailed analysis of the concession model examines these dynamics. Key monitoring questions include rate transparency, investment compliance, fair access provisions, and the adequacy of revenue sharing with the Angolan government. We track the LAR concession as a case study in private infrastructure management in Africa, publishing our assessment through the ESG Observatory.
The Concession Structure
In 2022, Angola awarded a 30-year concession for the Benguela Railway to the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) consortium. This deal — arguably the single most important commercial transaction in the corridor's history — placed the railway's operations and rehabilitation in the hands of a consortium led by Trafigura (the Swiss commodity trader), Mota-Engil (the Portuguese construction company), and Vecturis (the Belgian rail operator).
The concession structure grants LAR exclusive rights to operate freight and passenger services on the Benguela Railway for 30 years, with an obligation to invest in rehabilitation and capacity expansion. Angola retains ownership of the railway infrastructure while LAR manages operations, assumes commercial risk, and captures operating revenue. The state receives concession fees and benefits from economic activity generated by improved rail services.
The concession model — private operation of publicly-owned infrastructure — is common in rail transport globally. The UK's post-privatisation railway, various European rail concessions, and mining railways in Australia and Brazil all use variants of this model. For Angola, the concession represented a pragmatic approach: the state lacked the technical capacity and capital to operate the railway commercially, while private operators could bring both.
The Consortium Partners
Each consortium partner brings specific capabilities. Trafigura, one of the world's largest commodity traders with over $200 billion in annual revenue, provides commercial heft, mineral off-take relationships, and logistics expertise. As a major trader of DRC and Zambian copper and cobalt, Trafigura has direct commercial interest in efficient corridor logistics — its own profitability improves when transport costs decrease.
Mota-Engil, Portugal's largest construction company with extensive African operations, provides construction and engineering capacity. The company's experience with African infrastructure projects — including previous work in Angola — provides practical capability for the massive rehabilitation programme. Mota-Engil's Portuguese heritage connects to Angola's colonial history and ongoing bilateral relationship.
Vecturis, a Belgian rail management company, provides railway operations expertise. Managing train schedules, maintenance programmes, safety systems, and commercial operations requires specialised knowledge that neither Trafigura nor Mota-Engil possessed. Vecturis' European rail management experience provides operational standards that the railway requires.
The Deal's Critics
The LAR concession attracted criticism from multiple directions. Transparency advocates questioned the procurement process, noting that the concession was negotiated bilaterally rather than through competitive tender. The absence of public competition for one of Africa's most valuable rail concessions raised questions about whether Angola obtained optimal terms.
Civil society organisations questioned whether a 30-year concession gave too much control to foreign operators, potentially limiting Angola's ability to adjust terms as circumstances changed. The concession terms — not publicly disclosed in full — may include provisions that constrain future government options regarding railway policy, pricing, and community obligations.
Community groups along the corridor expressed concern that a commercially-focused concession would prioritise mineral freight over passenger services and community accessibility. The Benguela Railway had historically served both freight and passenger functions; a concession optimised for mineral export could neglect the passenger and community transport needs that local populations prioritise.
Trafigura's Dual Role
Trafigura's role in the consortium creates a structural tension that our monitoring addresses. As both the railway operator and a major customer (commodity trader using the railway to export minerals), Trafigura has potential conflicts of interest. Will pricing favour Trafigura's own commodity trading operations over third-party users? Will capacity allocation prioritise Trafigura-traded minerals over other freight? Will community transport needs take second place to Trafigura's commercial interests?
These questions are not hypothetical. In other contexts where commodity traders have controlled logistics infrastructure, preferential treatment for the operator's own trading operations has been documented. The concession terms may include provisions addressing these conflicts, but without full public disclosure, external monitoring is essential to verify fair treatment of all users.
The DFC Connection
The US Development Finance Corporation's $1.6 billion commitment to corridor development effectively provides public financing to support a privately-operated concession. This public-private structure raises accountability questions. DFC financing carries social and environmental safeguard requirements. Whether these requirements are effectively imposed on LAR's operations — and whether LAR's commercial incentives conflict with DFC's development mandate — is a central monitoring question.
The DFC's involvement also provides geopolitical context. US government financing for a railway operated by a Swiss-Portuguese-Belgian consortium, carrying minerals from DRC and Zambia to an Angolan port, demonstrates the complexity of the corridor's international governance structure. Multiple governments, international institutions, and private companies must coordinate to deliver outcomes that serve both commercial and development objectives.
Legacy for the Modern Corridor
The historical patterns documented in this account of lar concession deal continue to shape corridor development in ways that contemporary analysis frequently underestimates. Decision-makers — investors, government officials, international organisations — approach the corridor as a forward-looking infrastructure project. Communities along the corridor approach it as the latest chapter in a long history of external actors extracting value from their region. This divergence in perspective explains many of the tensions that our monitoring documents.
The institutional legacies of lar concession deal persist in governance structures, land tenure arrangements, community expectations, and political dynamics that corridor investors encounter. Colonial-era concession frameworks shaped post-independence mining codes. War-era displacement patterns created community configurations that current development plans must navigate. Privatisation-era experiences shaped community attitudes toward foreign investment. These historical layers cannot be wished away by development rhetoric; they must be understood, acknowledged, and addressed.
For our monitoring and advocacy work, this history provides essential context for assessing current practices. When we evaluate displacement procedures, we assess them against historical patterns of displacement that communities remember. When we evaluate benefit-sharing proposals, we compare them to historical patterns of benefit extraction that communities have experienced. When we evaluate community consultation processes, we measure them against historical patterns of exclusion that communities have endured. History is not background; it is the lens through which communities evaluate the corridor's promises.
The corridor has the potential to break historical patterns of extraction without community benefit. But realising this potential requires conscious effort to design governance frameworks, community engagement processes, and benefit-sharing mechanisms that explicitly address historical grievances. Our role is to ensure that this historical consciousness informs corridor development — that the mistakes documented in these historical accounts are not repeated in the next chapter of the corridor's story.
Community Consultation Questions
International best practice requires meaningful community consultation before major infrastructure concessions are awarded. The IFC Performance Standards, which the DFC applies to its investments, specify that affected communities must be consulted and their concerns addressed. Whether the LAR concession process met these requirements — and whether communities along the railway corridor were meaningfully consulted before a 30-year concession was awarded — is a question our monitoring addresses.
Communities along the Benguela Railway have specific concerns about the concession's impact on their lives. Will passenger services be maintained alongside freight operations? Will the railway provide accessible, affordable transport for local communities? Will construction and rehabilitation activities create local employment? Will affected communities receive compensation for disruption? These are not abstract policy questions; they determine daily life outcomes for hundreds of thousands of people.
The concession's 30-year term means that decisions made now will shape community outcomes for a generation. If community needs are not incorporated into the concession framework from the outset, retrofitting community benefit provisions will be far more difficult. Our advocacy for community benefit agreements and our monitoring of concession compliance serve this time-critical need.
Related Intelligence
This historical analysis draws on published academic sources.