Washington — Outgoing US president Joe Biden is headed to the Southern African nation of Angola this week, fulfilling a key promise in a bid to shore up ties with the continent.
Biden, who will keep within the capital metropolis Luanda from right this moment to Wednesday, would be the first US president to go to the oil-rich nation because it received independence from Portugal in 1975.
With the journey, Biden will lastly be fulfilling a promise made in late 2022 to go to sub-Saharan Africa. He may even be in search of to spice up the US presence on the continent within the face of rising funding by China.
The lame-duck president, who is about handy over the White Home to Donald Trump on 20 January, had initially deliberate to go in October, however needed to reschedule because of Hurricane Milton making landfall in Florida.
“This isn’t too little, too late,” a senior US official stated in an interview with reporters. “I feel that after years of being off the sphere, president Biden has put us again on.”
In Luanda, Biden will talk about varied US investments within the area, beginning with the “Lobito Hall,” a significant rail challenge linking Angola’s port of Lobito to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with a department line extending to Zambia.
The 800-mile challenge (1 300 kilometres) – funded by the US and the European Union and described by Biden as “the largest US rail funding in Africa ever,” – strategically hyperlinks the port with cobalt and copper mines, key uncooked supplies for smartphone batteries and different tech manufacturing.
Biden can be set to satisfy Angolan president Joao Lourenco, and provides a speech on public well being, agriculture, army cooperation and cultural heritage preservation.
“Regardless of president Biden being on his means out of the White Home, he will likely be representing the USA with all its geopolitical and geo-economic weight,” stated Heitor Carvalho, an economist at Lusiada College in Luanda.
Human rights organisations have urged Biden to lift Angola’s human rights report on his journey.
In keeping with a current report by human rights NGO Amnesty Worldwide, Angolan police have killed no less than 17 protesters, together with one minor, as a part of a long-running crackdown on dissent.
The non-profit additionally urged Biden to demand that Angola “instantly launch 5 authorities critics arbitrarily detained for greater than a yr.”
“President Biden has by no means shied away from speaking about challenges to democracy, his dedication to democracy,” the senior US official stated.
He’s additionally involved, nonetheless, with reasserting US ambitions in Africa within the face of encroaching affect by China.
The senior official informed journalists that African governments are in search of a substitute for Chinese language funding, particularly when it ends in “residing beneath crushing debt for generations to return.”
Angola, for example, owes China US$17 billion, about 40% of the nation’s whole debt.
Lourenco, too, seems to wish to diversify his nation’s partnerships past China and Russia.
In 2022, for example, Angola voted in favour of a United Nations’ decision condemning the invasion of Ukraine.
For the Angolan president, Biden’s go to “should be the fulfilment of his dream of being ‘the one’ who introduced the primary American president to Angola,” stated Cesaltina Abreu, a sociologist on the Catholic College of Angola.
Regardless of Biden’s efforts, it stays unknown whether or not US investments in Africa will proceed in the course of the Trump administration.
“If Trump makes as a lot of Africa and Angola as he did in his first time period, there will likely be a setback in programmes began by Biden,” Abreu added.
However the Republican president-elect ought to understand that “Angola, and nations prefer it, have many companions to select from in a world of accelerating competitors for entry to Africa’s important assets,” warned Alex Vines, a researcher at worldwide assume tank Chatham Home.
– Nampa/AFP
