[SMM Chromium Flash] Zimbabwe's NRZ Seeks $115m Afreximbank Facility as Rail Recapitalization Widens Beyond Zimasco Deal

Zimbabwe's National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), now operating under the country's sovereign wealth fund Mutapa Investments, is negotiating a $115 million facility with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to purchase 10 locomotives and 315 wagons and expand haulage capacity, Mutapa Investments CEO John Mangudya said on Thursday. The funds would also be used to repair sections of NRZ's railway infrastructure, he added.

Mangudya disclosed the talks as NRZ commissioned three locomotives and 100 wagons refurbished under a partnership with Zimasco, the Zimbabwean ferrochrome unit of China's Sinosteel, the deal already reported as a $2.8 million public-private financing arrangement in which Zimasco funded the wagon overhauls in exchange for freight-charge offsets. Thursday's disclosure indicates that partnership forms one component of a much larger rail recapitalization effort now under negotiation, rather than a standalone initiative.

NRZ has struggled for years under government under-investment, with freight volumes collapsing from a peak of 12 million mt in the 1990s to just 2 million mt in 2025. The state rail operator has increasingly turned to partnerships with private logistics firms and industrial users to rebuild capacity, including hauling lithium concentrate to Maputo port in partnership with private operators since July. For Zimbabwe's chrome sector, which depends on reliable rail access to move ferrochrome and chrome ore to regional ports, a more dependable NRZ network would support the kind of export logistics that producers including Zimasco have flagged as a persistent constraint.

The scale of NRZ's ambitions extends well beyond the Afreximbank facility under discussion: a full overhaul of the network has been estimated at around $600 million, meaning the current funding round is likely to yield improvements concentrated on specific mining and freight corridors rather than a network-wide transformation. No timeline for concluding the Afreximbank negotiations, or for delivery of the locomotives and wagons, has been disclosed.