Thousands cheer Biden’s arrival in Angola to visit sub-Saharan Africa

LUANDA, Angola (AP) — President Joe Biden arrived on his long-awaited first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa on Monday to cheers from thousands in Angola, where he will highlight an ambitious US-backed railway project to counter China’s influence on the continent of more than 1.4 billion people.

Biden’s three-day visit to Angola will largely focus on the Lobito Corridor railway reconstruction in Zambia, Congo and Angola. It aims to promote the US presence in a region rich in the critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicleselectronic devices and clean energy technologies.

Biden’s trip comes weeks before Republican Donald Trump takes office on January 20, when he finally lives up to Biden’s promise to visit sub-Saharan Africa. En route to Angola, he stopped in the Atlantic island nation of Cape Verde for a brief closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva.

Biden plans to meet with Angolan President João Lourenço in the capital Luanda, where crowds lined the streets for his arrival, and visit the National Slavery Museum. He will also travel to the Atlantic port city of Lobito to look at the railway project. He will announce new developments in health, agribusiness and security, White House officials said.

Biden was expected to visit Africa last year after reviving the US-Africa summit in December 2022. The trip was pushed back to 2024 and delayed again in October due to Hurricane Milton, reinforcing a sentiment among some Africans their continent is still low priority for Washington.

The last US president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015. Biden attended a UN climate summit in Egypt in North Africa in 2022.

“I’m just pushing back a little bit on the premise that this is some Johnny-come-lately, at the very end,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Angola, noting that the top administration’s officials had visited Africa, including Vice President Kamala Harris. “This is something he (Biden) has been focused on since he became president of the United States.”

A new strategy

Critical minerals are a key area of ​​competition between the US and China China has a stranglehold on Africa’s critical minerals.

For years, the United States has built relationships in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. The 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) rail upgrade is a different move and has shades of China’s Belt and Road Foreign Infrastructure Strategy.

The Biden administration has called the corridor one of the president’s signature initiatives, but Lobito’s future and any change in US engagement with the continent depends on the incoming administration of President Trump.

“President Biden is no longer the story,” said Mvemba Dizolele, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “Even African leaders are focused on Donald Trump.”

Fits Trump’s vision?

The United States has committed $3 billion to the Lobito corridor and related projects, administration officials said, along with funding from the European Union, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a Western-led private consortium and African banks.

“A lot is riding on this in terms of its success and its replicability,” said Tom Sheehy, a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan federal research institution.

He called it a flagship for the G7’s new Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which was driven by Biden and aims to reach other developing countries as a response to China’s Belt and Road.

Many are optimistic that the Lobito project, which won’t be finished until long after Biden leaves office, will survive a change in administration. Blunting China has bipartisan support and is high on Trump’s to-do list.

“As long as they continue to label Lobito as one of the main anti-China tools in Africa, there is a certain probability that it will continue to be funded,” said Christian-Géraud Neema, who analyzes the relationship between China and Africa for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Kirby said the Biden administration hopes Trump and his team see the value in Lobito, but “we’re still in office. We still have 50 days. This is an important development not only for the United States and our foreign policy goals in Africa, but for Africans.”

Just a starting point

The Lobito Corridor will be an upgrade and extension of a rail line from the copper and cobalt mines in northern Zambia and southern Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito, strengthening a westward route for Africa’s critical minerals. It also aims to eventually extend from Zambia and Congo to the east coast of Africa through Tanzania and be a coast-to-coast rail link.

While the Biden administration called it a “game-changer” for US investment in Africa, it is little more than a starting point for the US and its partners, with China dominates in mining in Zambia and the Congo. Congo has more than 70% of the world’s cobaltwith most heading to China to bolster its critical mineral supply chain on which the US and Europe depend.

Michelle Gavin, a former adviser to Obama on Africa, said the US had failed to take Africa seriously over several administrations, a bipartisan trend.

The Lobito Corridor was “not just about trying to blunt China, but trying to imagine, OK, what does it look like if we were to actually show up in a more serious way?” she said. “It’s a project. It’s one good idea. And I’m very happy that we’re doing it. It’s not enough.”

Some success in Africa

Lobito was made possible by some US diplomatic success in Angola that led to a Western consortium winning the bid for the project in 2022 ahead of Chinese competition, a surprise given Angola’s long and strong ties to Beijing.

The Biden administration accelerated American outreach to Angolaand reversing what was an antagonistic relationship three decades ago when the US armed anti-government rebels in Angola’s civil war. Trade between the United States and Angola was 1.77 billion dollars last year.

The visit will also draw attention to a perennial challenge to America’s values-based diplomacy in Africa. International rights groups have used Biden’s trip to criticize of the Lourenço government authoritarian shift. Political opponents have been jailed and allegedly tortured, while laws have been passed that severely restrict freedoms, according to rights groups.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa. Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.