Thousands cheer Biden's arrival in Angola for his long-promised sub-Saharan Africa visit

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

Biden's three-day visit to Angola will focus largely on the Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment in Zambia, Congo and Angola. It aims to advance the U.S. presence in a region rich in the critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices and clean energy technologies.

Biden's trip comes weeks before Republican Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, finally delivering on Biden's pledge to visit sub-Saharan Africa. On his way to Angola, he stopped in the Atlantic Ocean 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 also will travel to the Atlantic port city of Lobito for a look at the rail project. He will announce new developments on health, agribusiness and security, White House officials said.

Biden had been expected to visit Africa last year after reviving the U.S.-Africa Summit in December 2022. The trip was pushed back to 2024 and delayed again this October because of Hurricane Milton, reinforcing a sentiment among some Africans that their continent is still low priority for Washington.

The last U.S. president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015. Biden did attend a United Nations climate summit in Egypt in North Africa in 2022.

“I just kind of push back on the premise that this is some Johnny-come-lately trip at the very end,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on board Air Force One on the way to Angola, noting that top administration 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 field for U.S.-China competition, and China has a stranglehold on Africa’s critical minerals.

The U.S. has for years built relations in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. The 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) railway 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, yet Lobito’s future and any change in U.S. engagement with the continent depends on the incoming administration of President-elect 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.”

A fit for Trump’s vision?

The U.S. has committed $3 billion to the Lobito Corridor and related projects, administration officials said, alongside financing 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 nations as a response to China’s Belt and Road.

Many are optimistic that the Lobito project, which won't be complete until well after Biden has left office, will survive a change of administration. Blunting China has bipartisan backing and is high on Trump’s to-do list.

“As long as they keep labeling Lobito one of the main anti-China tools in Africa, there is a certain likelihood that it’s going to keep being funded,” said Christian-Géraud Neema, who analyzes China-Africa relations for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Kirby said the Biden administration hopes Trump and his team see the value in Lobito but “we are still in office. We still have 50 days. This is a key major development not just for the United States and our foreign policy goals in Africa, but for Africans.”

Only a starting point

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

While Biden’s administration called it a “game-changer” for U.S. investment in Africa, it’s little more than a starting point for the U.S. and its partners, with China dominant in mining in Zambia and Congo. Congo has more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, with most heading to China to reinforce its critical mineral supply chain that the U.S. and Europe rely on.

Michelle Gavin, a former adviser on Africa to Obama, said the U.S. had failed to take Africa seriously over multiple 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 actually were to show up in a more serious way?” she said. “It’s one project. It’s one good idea. And I’m very glad we’re doing it. It’s not enough.”

Some success in Africa

Lobito was made possible by some American 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 with Beijing.

The Biden administration accelerated American outreach to Angola, turning around what was an antagonistic relationship three decades ago when the U.S. armed anti-government rebels in Angola’s civil war. U.S.-Angola trade was $1.77 billion last year.

The visit will also draw attention to a perennial challenge for America’s value-based diplomacy in Africa. International rights groups have used Biden’s trip to criticize the Lourenço government’s authoritarian shift. Political opponents have been imprisoned 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.