Un transport ferroviaire B.C.K.

Barges chargées de cuivre arrivant à Kinshasa

Le port d'Albertville (C.F.L.)

Matadi, notre grand port national, porte de sortie principale du cuivre congolais.

A simple glance to a card of the Africa Centrale is sufficient to remind to the reality those that could be impressed again by the classic slogan of the "geological scandal."
Our layers are indeed more or less to equal distance of the Atlantic Ocean and the ocean Indian and this distance is enormous. So therefore, the problems put by the export of our products were always for us of a major importance.

During this century, the High Katanga is little by little become the crossroads of four ways of exit toward the oceans. It is a fundamental asset for the security of the Congolese economy because he/it is possible to us not to be cut completely of the outside world in case of accident on one or the other line.

The way of main export of the Gecomin is what one calls the "national way", mid-fluvial, mid-railway. The railroad of the B.C.K. joins Lubumbashi in Port-Francqui via Tenke and Kamina.

In Port-Francqui, the Otraco loads the copper and of the extracts of zinc on barges that are either towed advanced until the port of Kinshasa from where they are transported by rail until Matadi, national sea port. It is obvious that we use by priority and to saturation the capacity of export of the national way.
Another way, national on a part of his/her/its course, borrows the network of the B.C.K. until Kabongo via Kamina, then the railroad of the C.F.L. until Albertville. The office Congolese of the Railroads of the Big Lakes transports this copper then on his/her/its boats until Kigoma in Tanzania where the East African Railwayses take the copper in charge until Dar be-Salaam.

The way the most direct and shortest is the railroad of the Benguela that crosses all the Angola since Dilolo, where he/it is joined to the network of the B.C.K., until Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean. Until the construction of a railroad direct Matadi-Lubumbashi, the railroad of the Benguela is especially the way obliged of import of a large part of the materials that we buy overseas, because of the absence of load ruptures. It is also the exclusive way for the export of our cobalt, whose transportation requires the less possible transfers. The way of Lobito is finally the most economic to the departure of Kolwezi: it is therefore normally by her that we must export a part of the production of the factories of the Luilu in cathodes of copper.

The fourth way of export is the one that leads to the port of Beira to Mozambique, after having crossed Zambia then Rhodesia. He/it is necessary to us to send a part of our production there to bring wagons sufficiently in view of the import in Congo of coke and coal deWankie, indispensable fuels to our factories.

So therefore, a certain interdependence exists between the various ways of export but these contigencies don't stop us from granting absolute priority to the Congolese carriers. In the calculation to the month the month of the balances between the different ways, he/it is on the other hand a constraint that we impose ourselves with rigor and that proceeds our role of main supplier of the foreign currency of the Congolese Treasure.

A certain tonnage of products that constitutes a permanent wheel exists fatally on every line, along the way: it is what we call the "course of road" or the pipe-line" generally. The good management of our treasury, in the perspective besides of the one of the state, require that we maintained this course of road to the strict minimum technically necessary at the risk of freezing the funds that could be important uselessly. A slowing or a momentary stop of the traffic on a way immediately provoke an increase of the tonnage immobilized on this one and must immediately bring us to slow down the food of it to the profit of another way, during the time necessary to the regularization. It is why the coordination of our export traffics requires our part an attention of every instant.

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