Mining companies and investors including some heavyweight industrial combines in China are pouring into the region in a quest for iron ore, driving a railway building and mining boom whose worth JPMorgan Chase & Co recently estimated at USD 25 billion.
The boom during which almost 5000 kilometer of railway lines and almost a dozen new ports will be built or repaired has not been seen in these parts since the colonial powers first divided up the continent during the Scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century.
Then, as now, the railways were built to extract wealth. The first railway in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, was built to get to gold mines at Tarkwa and Obuaso. And in Togo, German colonists named their new railways after the produce they were built to carry the coconut line, the cocoa line and the palm oil line.
It's China's turn now. The spot price of ore may have come off the boil but China's steel production continues to expand, and demand for ore remains unseated. West Africa, with its billions of tons of iron ore, is mining's new El Dorado.
Mr John Welborn CEO of Australian miner Equatorial Resources said that currently developing a mine and railway in the Republic of Congo, quoted China Iron & Steel Association official Wu Xichun: "By 2015, China wants to import 50% of its iron ore from Chinese-owned mines elsewhere in the world."
Mr Welborn said that while the rate of economic growth might be slowing, annual Chinese steel production recently hit a record high of 767 million tonne. He said that tell me why I should be worried as an iron ore producer about the current trend in the Chinese economy.
The prospect of that payday has spurred mining companies to invest in countries such as Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Gabon and Cameroon as well as Sierra Leone and Liberia.
African Minerals and its Chinese partner, Shandong Iron & Steel Group, have together raised about USD 3 billion of debt and equity for the project a deal that will earn the steelmaker 10 million tonne of iron ore a year at preferential rates.
In Guinea, Rio Tinto plans to build a 670 kilometer railway from its proposed mine at Simandou west across the country to a port to be built south of Conakry, the capital.
In Liberia, the old Liberia America Mining Company Railway, which ceased operating in 1992 after rebels blew up an ore train, had almost returned to the earth. In some places villagers were using the line as an ad-hoc transport system.
A rail consultant said that "They had small hand-propelled trolleys named make a ways to take produce to market. These were quite rustic, being made of wood with old car bearings for wheels."
Ms Hesta Pearson spokeswoman said that "The challenge Liberia faced to rebuild a country after decades of civil war was enormous. The railway track was badly damaged and had to be rehabilitated. We had to re-ballast the tracks, replace rails and crossties, rebuild all bridges, replace culverts and construct rail access roads."
