What Biden's visit to Angola says about Lobito Corridor and US-China rivalry
South China Morning Post
6 min read
When Joe Biden arrives in Angola on Monday on his first African visit as US president, he is likely to land at a China-built airport and then be driven along a highway also built or financed by China.
That goes to show how deep Chinese influence runs in Angola, where post-civil war reconstruction was largely bankrolled by Beijing, while Western lenders shunned the African nation as a risky Cold War proxy.
Biden's three-day visit at the tail-end of his term is expected to seal his legacy in Africa, specifically the Lobito Corridor - a US-invested railway and logistics project connecting Angola with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
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Angola is seen as a test case for US ambitions to counter Chinese influence in Africa, where Beijing has funded many megaprojects under its Belt and Road Initiative. US investment in Angola is part of the Group of 7's Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which aims to provide US$600 billion for global infrastructure by 2027.
The US challenge to China in Africa also comes amid a race for access to mineral resources, at a time when Angolan President Joao Lourenco is seeking to diversify the country's oil-dependent economy and reduce excessive reliance on China.
Angola received billions of dollars from China to build its housing, roads, hydroelectric dams and railways after a decades-long civil war ended in 2002, and used oil shipments to repay those loans until 2017, when the late Jose Eduardo dos Santos was president. Lourenco, his successor, says some of those resource-backed loans hurt the economy.
In an interview published by The New York Times on Thursday, Lourenco said having debt bound to collaterals such as oil "was disadvantageous for the country".
"We are paying off the debt. If you would ask me now if I had to take a new loan under the same conditions, I would say no."
The Lobito Corridor is Washington's biggest project in Africa in decades. It involves refurbishing an existing section of the 1,344km (835-mile) railway line from the Angolan port of Lobito to the southern DRC, and building a 800km track through northwestern Zambia, with plans to also extend it to the Indian Ocean shores of Tanzania.
The move is seen as part of attempts by the US and its European allies to gain access to African critical minerals in their drive to de-risk from Chinese supply chains.
According to Carlos Lopes, a professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town, Angola is a logical choice for Biden due to its critical role in the geopolitics of minerals and the race for resources essential to the global energy transition.
"The Lobito Corridor, backed by US funding, is not only a key logistics project but also a counterweight to China's entrenched presence in Angola and the broader region," Lopes said.
"Angola is emblematic of this rivalry," he said, while noting that China had not only invested heavily in Angola's oil sector and infrastructure but its footprint extended also into financing roads, railways and telecoms technology.
The oil-rich coastal nation is also increasingly pivotal to the supply of minerals like copper and cobalt from its landlocked neighbours Zambia and the DRC. Both are critical materials for electric vehicle batteries and other renewable technologies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping with Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco ahead of talks in Beijing in March. Photo: Xinhua alt=Chinese President Xi Jinping with Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco ahead of talks in Beijing in March. Photo: Xinhua>
"By choosing Angola, Biden underscores the strategic importance of the Lobito Corridor as a US-backed alternative that connects regional economies to global markets without relying on Chinese capital," Lopes said.
Biden will also be the first ever US president to visit Angola, keeping a promise he made during the US-Africa Leaders' Summit in 2022, according to Ovigwe Eguegu, policy analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Development Reimagined.
"It also shows the importance of the Lobito Corridor project, which is the most practical step the Biden administration has taken towards securing the US critical and strategic minerals supply chain," Eguegu said.
He also highlighted Lourenco's efforts to tilt Angola's mostly China-facing foreign relations towards more balanced ties with both the US and China.
"Angola is an indisputable partner of the Lobito Corridor project which the Biden administration has clearly shown commitment towards realising," he added.
W. Gyude Moore, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development and a former Liberian public works minister, said the Biden administration and its allies in Europe had put significant political capital behind not completely ceding the African infrastructure space to China, using Lobito Corridor as the marker.
"Angola thus became a focal point as the end of the [Lobito] line. That the line would increase access to strategic minerals made it even more important," Moore added.
A White House briefing last week revealed that the US had spent or invested more than 80 per cent of the US$55 billion that Biden promised the continent at the 2022 Leaders Summit in Washington, and a record number of senior US officials had travelled to Africa since then.
According to former US official Cameron Hudson, the US believes that it has moved Angola from the Chinese orbit into the American orbit and Biden's visit is intended to cement that change.
"This visit plants the flag of US influence in Angola earned over many years of diplomatic and financial investment," said Hudson, who is now a senior associate with the Africa programme at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
He also expects incoming president Donald Trump to continue to deepen ties with Angola because of its strategic value to the United States and "because he will also want to prevent China from regaining its momentum in the country".
Washington had invested more diplomatically and financially in Angola than in any other African country, Hudson said. "The problem for Washington is that it is simply unable to replicate this level of engagement across very many countries in Africa."
