“Amtrak Joe” Biden uses Angola visit to promote major US-backed rail project in Africa
LUANDA, Angola — Even in the final days of his presidency and thousands of miles from home, the American president Joe Biden it’s finding ways to celebrate trains.
Biden used the third and final day of his visit to Angola on Wednesday to showcase the Lobito Corridor Railway, where the United States and its allies are investing heavily to refurbish 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) of rail lines in Zambia, Congo and Angola.
The project aims to strengthen the American presence in a region rich in cobalt, copper and others critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicleselectronic devices and clean energy technologies. By the end of the decade, the rail line could even go a long way to connecting the west coast of southern Africa to the eastern edge of the continent.
“I’m probably the most pro-rail man in America,” Biden, the first U.S. president to visit Angola, said in a speech Tuesday evening.
Biden has long had the nickname Amtrak Joe for the 36 years he spent riding America’s train from his home in Delaware to Washington while in the Senate. He said the Lobito Corridor was the largest U.S. investment in a rail project outside the country.
On Wednesday, Biden flew from Luanda, the Angolan capital, to Lobito, on Africa’s west coast, to tour port facilities linked to the corridor with Angolan President João Lourenço, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and the Congolese president. Felix Tshisekedi and Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango.
The leaders also planned to meet with representatives of companies that could benefit from the corridor project, including a telecommunications company developing cellular service in the region, a food production company and Acrow Bridge, a Pennsylvania company that manufactures bridges in prefabricated steel and has a contract to deliver nearly 200 to Angola.
Biden would also see a U.S. General Electric locomotive used for freight on the Lobito Atlantic Railway, the White House said, with the United States promoting the railroad’s modernization as a catalyst that it hopes will trigger a new era of Western private sector investment in this part of the country. Africa.
The Biden administration says the rail corridor will serve commercial interests and counter China’s growing influence in Africa. His long-awaited first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president came in a week when trade tensions between the United States And China on rare minerals needed for new technologies has gone up a notch.
In Lobito, Biden will announce a new US investment of $600 million for projects associated with the corridor, which has also benefited from funding from the European Union, the Group of Seven major industrialized countries, a private consortium led by the West and African banks.
Biden visited the port of Lobito which will provide an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean and ideally a route to the West for minerals and other African exports. Under an imposing blue crane, a banner read: “The Lobito Corridor connecting Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean”.
Biden announced that Congo had also committed a new direct loan of $553 million to the railroad to modernize and operate more than 1,000 kilometers of line between Lobito and the Congo border.
The administration says it can currently transport material goods about 45 days to get them from eastern Congo or Zambia to market and usually involves trucking to South Africa . Test loads using the new rail corridor completed the same journey in approximately 40 to 50 hours.
China, for its part, is already investing heavily in mining and processing African minerals and has used its Belt and Road Initiative Infrastructure Strategy promote its economic and political influence in the world.
In September, China announced it had signed an agreement with Tanzania and Zambia to renovate a separate railway line running from eastern Zambia to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, on Africa’s east coast.
The countries had already worked together to build the railway line in the 1970s, but it had fallen into disrepair. China’s decision to renovate it – announced on the sidelines of this year’s China-Africa Forum – is seen by some analysts as China’s response to the Lobito Corridor.
A senior US administration official called the Lobito corridor the heart of competition with China, not as a political adversary but from a commercial point of view.
The idea is that instead of injecting aid, Washington will try to increase American influence by promoting projects likely to attract investment and therefore help communities and countries in the long term. The Lobito Corridor has become a model approach that the United States is seeking to replicate in other parts of the world, said the official, who briefed reporters during Biden’s visit to Angola on condition of anonymity to provide details about the project that have not yet been made public.
The corridor won’t be completed for years, meaning much of the ongoing work will take place under the administration of Republican Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20. The Biden White House says Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have supported past efforts to promote African business interests through targeted investments and that such initiatives have appealed to Trump and his top advisers in the past.
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Associated Press writer Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, contributed to this report.
