Andre Klynsmith

Railway

14 Million Tonnes a Year on the Line: Why the Trans-Kalahari Railway's June 2026 Feasibility Deadline Is the Real Test of Namibia and Botswana's Atlantic Ambition

The Trans-Kalahari Railway feasibility study is now on track for completion in June 2026, with Namibia and Botswana committing at their April Joint Ministerial Committee in Swakopmund to move into a Request for Proposals phase between April and September 2026 — clearing the way for contract awards by April 2027 on a corridor designed to move up to 14 million tonnes of coal and copper a year.

Railway

26 May 2026 • 5 min read

After 16 years of stop-start activity, the Trans-Kalahari Railway is now closer to a concrete procurement timeline than at any point in its history. The June 2026 feasibility close-out is the moment that converts a corridor concept into a project the market can price.

A 1,500 km line built for two commodities

The Trans-Kalahari Railway (TKR) is a planned 1,500-kilometre standard-gauge line that would link Botswana's central and eastern coal belt to the Port of Walvis Bay via Gobabis in eastern Namibia. The headline tonnage target is 14 million tonnes a year of coal and copper, with iron ore and other bulks layered on top. That positions the TKR as a direct alternative to the South African rail and port system for landlocked exporters and a structural competitor to the Maputo and Richards Bay routes for Botswana's coal in particular.

The April 2026 Joint Ministerial Committee meeting in Swakopmund — co-chaired by Namibia's Minister Veikko Nekundi and Botswana's Minister Noah Salakae — was the first time both sides publicly aligned on the post-feasibility milestones. The signal to industry is that the project has political momentum and a procurement pathway, not just a planning document.

A procurement timeline the market can plan around

The April Joint Ministerial Committee set out a clean sequence. The feasibility study closes in June 2026. A Request for Proposals follows between April and September 2026. Evaluation and contract negotiations run through 2026 and 2027, with formal contract awards targeted by April 2027. That kind of explicit calendar is what bulk customers, EPC contractors and financiers need to start putting real capital and tonnage assumptions on the table.

For SADC logistics operators, the question is not whether the TKR ultimately gets built — it is whether to start positioning around the assumption that bulk volumes will start to shift west during the late 2020s. Walvis Bay is already deepening its channel and expanding container capacity through Terminal Investment Namibia. The TKR layers a heavy-haul rail leg onto an Atlantic gateway that is being upgraded in parallel.

Competing — and complementing — the Lobito and TAZARA lines

The TKR will not be the only new heavy-haul rail line on the SADC map. The Lobito Atlantic Railway is moving into its EPC evaluation phase, with construction targeted to begin by early 2027. TAZARA is in the middle of a US$1.4 billion Chinese-funded rebuild. The Trans-Kalahari Railway is the third leg of a triangular reshape that gives the region — for the first time — a credible western Atlantic exit (Lobito and TKR-Walvis Bay) to balance the eastern Indian Ocean ports.

Road haulage will not disappear from these corridors. But the structural shift over the next five to seven years is from road-only to road-and-rail combinations across SADC's mining routes. Operators with a hard road-only model on Botswana coal, Namibian copper or Zambian copper flows should be thinking about partnerships, rail-side warehousing and modal-shift hedges now.

About the Author
	Andre Klynsmith Entrepreneur & Technology Enthusiast Andre's expertise spans technology, blockchain, transport, and logistics -- with a passion for innovation and driving positive change across industries. info@laaimylorrie.com | laaimylorrie.com