Dreams of Extractive Development - Reviving the Benguela Railway in Central Angola

Starting from a 2019 photo of the Benguela Railway, I tell the story of how the Angolan government, with Chinese oil-backed loans and construction expertise, sought to revitalise the colonial-era railway link from the Atlantic port of Lobito to the mining areas of Katanga and Zambia. This dream and its seeming failure in a context of economic crisis brought on by the 2014 commodity slump, reveals the limits to Angola's oil-fuelled reconstruction drive. At the same time it allows us to chart how the cyclical ups and downs of the global economy have impacted Angola's insertion into extractive capitalism, and how colonial-era ideals of professionalism and civilisedness reverberate in contemporary projects of self-making.