As Angola hosts the 7th African Union-European Union Summit, one of the flagship projects presented as proof of renewed partnership is the Lobito Corridor. Over the past year, Washington, Brussels, and several media outlets have portrayed the corridor as a strategic Western response to China’s expanding influence in Africa--a seductive narrative suggesting a geopolitical comeback, writes Rafael Marques de Morais for Maka Angola.

In truth, Marques de Morais writes, it is a mirror of everything negative the continent endures: Chinese debt, Western opportunism, Congolese blood, Angolan misrule--and a railway that connects foreign interests more efficiently than it connects the people who live along its tracks.