Joe Biden is set to embark on his long-awaited first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as US president, but it comes amid uncertainty over the future of US-Africa relations as Donald Trump prepares to succeed him in January.
Biden’s visit to oil-rich Angola seeks to highlight America’s drive to focus more on trade and heavy investment in infrastructure, which some analysts see as the most direct counter to China’s influence on the continent.
“It’s a perfect marriage of convenience,” Angolan analyst Edmilson Angelo told the BBC.
Biden’s choice of Angola is very important – he is the first US president to visit this country, which indicates a sharp improvement in relations between the two countries.
Angola has been firmly in the political orbit of China and Russia since gaining independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, but since coming to power in 2017, President João Lourenço has steered it toward closer ties with the United States.
“The Lawrence administration has seen Angola’s foreign policy move away from ideology towards pragmatic multipolarity, becoming truly non-aligned,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Biden will highlight his signature initiative in the region, a 1,344 km (835 mile) rail line connecting cobalt, lithium and copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper belt region of Zambia with the Angolan port city of Labita on the Atlantic Ocean.
Besides oil, Angola is also rich in minerals, including cobalt and lithium, which are needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles.
Once completed, the Labita Corridor will help transport these important minerals from the resource-rich heart of Africa to Europe and the United States.
The Lobito Corridor Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) says on its website that the US involvement “represents Washington’s first alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to create a series of trade routes linking several African countries, and in elsewhere, to the Asian giant.
Biden’s visit comes at the end of his presidency, and it is unclear whether the Trump administration will continue with the project.
Dr. Vines believes it “could survive a Trump presidency as it is largely focused on competing against China.”
However, he notes that both Western and Chinese firms will be able to use the infrastructure, which “may call into question its value to Trump, a US president who is likely to define his administration largely by competing with Beijing.”
Lawrence expressed hope that the Trump administration will develop this initiative.
“Governments come and go, so all we have to do is be ready to work with whoever is in power,” he told the New York Times ahead of Biden’s visit.
The Labita Corridor is a joint project of three African countries, the United States, other G7 states, and private investors.
“We have a collective commitment of $600bn (£470bn) and more in global support from the G7 by 2027,” he said. Helaina Matsa, Acting Special Coordinator of the US State Department project.
Lorenzo defended the investment, dismissing concerns that it mimicked the exploitation of Africa’s resources during the colonial era.
“Today, when we export minerals, we export them for the benefit of African countries, unlike in the colonial period when they were extracted without the consent of our indigenous people,” he told the New York Times.
