There are several other railroad links from ports to Mali that...

There are several other railroad links from ports to Mali that are currently not operational/partly operational as they require some rehabilitation.

Off the top of my head, there are rail lines linking the ports of Dakar in Senegal and Conakry in Guinea to the capital of Mali, Bamako (150m by road from Goulamina). I believe there is at least one more that I can't recall, as well as many proposals for new rail lines from other ports and countries but these projects are still in the feasibility stage.

Five years is a long time and the landscape of infrastructure in Africa will likely be vastly different as natural resource projects are developed, incentivising and financing the development of necessary infrastructure i.e. transport and power, as we are starting to see with Bollore upgrading the annual capacity of the SITARAIL 5 times larger than the current throughput. This upgrade is a game changer for BGS as it makes a large scale carbonate plant feasible by enabling large amounts of reagents to be transported to site at a low cost.

These multiple rail links to the project will give Goulamina even more options moving forward, lower transport rates due to competition, more flexibility and redundancy... extremely positive for the long term future of the project.