Angola is witnessing a historic moment as Joe Biden becomes the first U.S. president to visit the nation, marking a shift in Angola’s foreign alliances. Under President João Lourenço, Angola has pivoted westward, courting American investment in infrastructure and critical sectors like telecoms. The Lobito Economic Corridor, a major U.S.-backed initiative, symbolizes this partnership. While international ties strengthen, domestic challenges like inflation and unrest highlight Angola’s complex journey toward global integration.
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From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com
© 2024 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.
The Economist
America under Joe Biden plays the pragmatist in Africa – Donald Trump is likely to follow suit ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
“It was pretty unthinkable ten years ago,” says an Angolan cabinet minister in his office, where the waft of the air conditioner ripples both his Hermès tie and the Soviet-inspired national flag behind him. Like everyone in Luanda, the capital, he is talking about Joe Biden’s expected arrival on December 2nd, the first trip to sub-Saharan Africa by an American president since 2015—and the first by any to Angola.
For João Lourenço, Angola’s president since 2017, it is the fruit of seven years of forging closer ties to the West after decades of dependence on Russia and, especially, China. His canny diplomacy shows how African leaders can exploit geopolitical rivalries. For Mr Biden the visit will highlight how his team has wooed a new partner in the global south. Since this has required a heavy dose of pragmatism in Washington, the unlikely friendship between America and Angola should endure under Donald Trump. Indeed, it foreshadows the realpolitik that will guide the new administration’s approach to Africa.
Relations between America and Angola—sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer and home to 37m people—have not always been so warm. In the civil war after Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975, the MPLA, the ruling party, was backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Its opponents were supported by America and South Africa’s white-led regime. America recognised Angola only in 1993 (though American oil firms pumped throughout the war, a sign of how the MPLA rarely lets its ostensible Leninism get in the way of business). After the cold war Angola got more arms from Russia than any country in sub-Saharan Africa. After 2000 no African country borrowed more money from China, often via oil-backed loans.
Angola’s westward turn began when Mr Lourenço replaced José Eduardo dos Santos, a corrupt autocrat who had ruled for 38 years. Some credit the pivot in part to his influential wife, Ana Lourenço, who worked in Washington for the World Bank. (The couple reportedly still own a house in Maryland.) But it was mostly pragmatism. Angola had maxed out its Chinese credit card. Better relations with America were required to unlock support from the IMF and foreign direct investment. If Mr Lourenço could sell his clear-out of the Dos Santos clan as a broad anti-corruption drive, all the better. “He’s a chess player,” says a Portuguese businessman.
The first Trump administration responded to Mr Lourenço’s entreaties. Mike Pompeo, then Mr Trump’s secretary of state, visited Luanda in 2020. Trumpish China hawks saw a chance to loosen China’s grip in Africa. After Mr Biden took office, Angola became part of his efforts to build Western-friendly supply chains in critical minerals. In 2022 an American-backed consortium that included Trafigura, a commodities trader, won a concession to upgrade what is now known as the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR). It runs from Lobito to the border with copper-rich Congo (see map). A Chinese group lost the bid.
In 2021 Angola awarded a licence to Africell, an American-owned telecoms operator. The firm had earlier raised $100m from a US government agency to support its ventures. Africell will use infrastructure built by Nokia, a Finnish firm, rather than Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant.
The cost of neglect
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the fence-sitting over it in many African capitals spurred American officials to bump up diplomacy in the global south, including Angola. “The Angolans managed to tell the Americans quickly that they could be had for a price,” says Ricardo Soares de Oliveira of Oxford University, a historian of modern Angola. “It is an example of how African leaders can try to exploit the nooks and crannies of global politics at a time of geopolitical upheaval.”
Later that year Mr Lourenço had prominent billing at a US-Africa summit in Washington and he has since been received in the Oval Office. America wants Angola, which has one of Africa’s largest armies, to play a bigger role in regional security. Last year it became only the third African country to join the Artemis Accords, a set of principles championed by NASA meant to ensure the peaceful use of space (and which China and Russia reject).
Then there is the Lobito Economic Corridor, America’s largest-ever investment in African infrastructure, based around the LAR and an adjoining line in Congo. It is the centrepiece of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the G7’s rival to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. American officials say governments and firms have pledged to invest almost $5bn in it. This includes financing from the American government for a solar-power project and to support a study into extending the railway to Zambia. “Lobito is an example of what can happen when America decides to lead,” argues Judd Devermont, a former top official for Africa in the White House. One day the line may be part of a trans-continental network linking the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Angolan bigwigs have similarly high hopes. José de Lima Massano, the economy minister, says the corridor will help lessen reliance on oil. Ricardo De Abreu, the transport minister, says it will let Angola “become more integrated into global supply chains…What we’re not doing is excluding China. But we are getting much closer to the US than we were before.”
Ordinary Angolans are less keen on the visit. They like Angola’s moment in the spotlight but are fed up with double-digit inflation and corruption. This week thousands of opposition supporters—who say the elections in 2022 were rigged—protested in the streets. Carlos Rosado de Carvalho, a newspaper editor, notes that the West was vocal when Nicolás Maduro stole Venezuela’s election but quiet in Angola’s case. “Lourenço is more popular outside the country than inside the country.”
Do not expect that to change. Joshua Meservey of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, argues that under Mr Trump American policy in Africa will be influenced more by “a realist understanding of American national interest and not the cultural preferences of groups within the Democratic Party”. It is unlikely, for instance, that there will be a repeat of what happened in 2023, when Uganda lost tariff-free access to America because it passed anti-gay legislation.
The Lobito corridor is “one of the few bright spots the new president will be inheriting on the African continent” amid “an overall disappointing stewardship of America’s interests”, argues Peter Pham, a senior official in the first Trump administration. He believes that realpolitik means the project will continue.
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