President Joe Biden will be the first president to visit Angola this week as he seeks to deepen the relationship between the two countries and highlight recent investments as an alternative to increased aid. China.
Biden’s visit is also the first visit by a US president to Africa since President Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia in July 2015.
His trip, scheduled for December 2 to December 4, will begin with a bilateral meeting with Angolan President João Lourenço in the capital city of Luanda, according to the trip’s forecast, a senior administration official. They met for the last time in December 2023 in the Oval Office.
Angolan President Joao Lourenco and President Biden during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on November 30, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
Biden will make remarks in Luanda, “highlighting our shared history and the growth and strength of our relationship in Angola and across the continent,” according to the official.
He will also announce new deliverables related to global health security, agribusiness, security cooperation and the preservation of Angola’s cultural heritage.
In 2022, the United States pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa over three years, and a senior administration official said 80 percent of that pledge has already been met.
“In the last two years, in Angola, through the investment of the US government, more telecommunications have been added, more people are connecting to 3G and now they are building 5G networks, as well as renewable energy,” the official said. . “In fact, the U.S. has approved (Export-Import Bank) financing of nearly $2.5 billion in renewable energy projects that will enable countries to transition from energy deficit to energy exporters to their neighbors.”
Angolan President Joao Lourenco in Pretoria on June 19, 2024.
Phill Magakoe/POOL/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The Biden administration is trying to counter China’s growing influence in Africa and its major commitments, including $50 billion in aid announced in September that would go toward infrastructure and at least one million jobs.
The official added that “we don’t think it’s a bad thing” for China to invest in Africa, but warned of the long-term implications of such aid, as opposed to the “significant” investments offered by the US.
“If it means that a few years at the end of the investment, the communities living in the area of the investment have not had an increase in GDP, they have not seen the benefits of their lives, they have not raised the lives of the communities, if it means that the government will live with serious debt for generations… then the government will have to decide whether that’s the alternative they want,” the official said.
“What we’ve heard over and over again over the years is that people want to have more – people in Africa want to have more investment alternatives, not less. But if they don’t have an alternative, they’re forced to have an investment.”
Biden is cramming into this trip with less than two months to go before he leaves office after promising to visit in 2022. Senior administration officials have said that he has wanted to make this trip for a long time. While that was being worked on, more than 20 cabinet-level and senior officials traveled to the continent in the past two years, including Vice President Kamala Harris in March 2023.
