A Kenya Railways Corporation freight train pulling shipping containers leaves the port station on the Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway line in Mombasa on 1 September 2018. China's Belt and Road Initiative aims to revive and extend trading routes connecting China with Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. (Photo: Luis Tato / Bloomberg via Getty Images) The Tanzanian and Zambian governments decided to hand the concession to run Tazara — as the railroad is known — on a commercial basis to a Chinese state-owned company. A team from China Civil and Engineering Construction Corp. visited the two African nations to study the line ahead of submitting the proposal.
China built and financed the 1,860-kilometer (1,156 miles) railway in the 1970s, and it’s since fallen into disrepair, operating at a fraction of its design capacity. The line will compete directly with another railroad the US is backing to connect Zambia westward to the Lobito port on Angola’s Atlantic coast.