Biden is finally heading to Africa to try to counter China. Will Trump continue his approach?

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Joe Biden finally makes its long-promised visit to Africa to present a US-backed rail project in three countries that he presented as a new approach to countering part of China’s global influence.

Biden’s first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president – ​​which he left until the end — will highlight the railway redevelopment of the Lobito corridor in Zambia, Congo and Angola.

Biden begins a three-day trip to Angola on Monday. He will meet President João Lourenço on Tuesday and visit part of the railway on Wednesday. En route to Angola, he stopped on the Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde for a meeting with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva.

The Lobito rail project aims to strengthen the American presence in a region rich in critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicleselectronic devices and clean energy technologies.

This is a key area for competition between the United States and China and China has control on Africa’s critical minerals.

The United States has for years been building relationships in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. Modernizing the 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) railway is a different approach and has nuances from China’s. Belt and Road Foreign Infrastructure Strategy which has gained momentum.

The Biden administration has called the corridor one of the president’s signature initiatives, but the future of Lobito and any changes in how the United States engages with a continent of 1.4 billion inhabitants who lean strongly towards China depend on new administration of Donald Trump.

“President Biden is no longer the story,” said Mvemba Dizolele, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “Even African leaders are focusing on Donald Trump. »

The United States has committed $3 billion to the Lobito Corridor and related projects, administration officials said, alongside funding from the European Union, the Group of Seven major industrialized countries, a Western-led private consortium of African banks.

“A lot hinges on this in terms of success and replicability,” said Tom Sheehy, a researcher at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan federal research institution.

He called it one of the flagships of the new G7 Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership, led by Biden and aims to reach other developing countries in response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Biden promised to visit Africa last year after relaunching the U.S.-Africa summit for the first time in nearly a decade in December 2022. The trip was postponed until 2024 and delayed again in October because of Hurricane Milton, reinforcing the feeling among Africans that their continent is still not a priority.

The last US president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015. Biden did attend a UN climate summit in Egypt, North Africa, in 2022.

“I just push back against the idea that this is a Johnny trip that came at the very end,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One in route to Angola, noting that senior administration officials had visited Africa, including Vice President Kamala Harris. “This is something that he (Biden) has been focused on since he became president of the United States. »

Many are optimistic that the Lobito project, which is not expected to be completed until well after Biden leaves office, will survive a change in administration and have a chance. This goes some way to blunting China, which enjoys bipartisan support and at the top of Trump’s to-do list.

“As long as they continue to characterize Lobito as one of the main anti-China tools in Africa, there is a certain probability that he will continue to be financed,” said Christian-Géraud Neema, who analyzes Sino-China relations. Africans.

Kirby said the Biden administration hoped Trump and his team saw the value in Lobito, but “we’re still in power.” We still have 50 days left. This is a major development, not only for the United States and our foreign policy goals in Africa, but also for Africans. »

The Lobito Corridor will consist of an upgrade and extension of a railway line linking the copper and cobalt mines of northern Zambia and southern Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean, a route to the west for Africa’s essential minerals. It also aims to eventually extend from Zambia and Congo to the east coast of Africa via Tanzania and provide a coast-to-coast rail link.

Although the Biden administration has called it “groundbreaking” for U.S. investment in Africa, it is little more than a starting point for the United States and its partners, as China dominates the mining sector in Zambia and Congo. Congo has more than 70% of the world’s cobaltmost of which are heading to China to strengthen its supply chain of critical minerals that the United States and Europe must rely on.

Lobito was made possible thanks to some American diplomatic successes in Angola that led a Western consortium to win the tender for the project in 2022, ahead of Chinese competition, a surprise given Angola’s position. long and strong ties with Beijing. China financed a previous railway redevelopment.

The Biden administration has accelerated American action in Angolareversing what was an antagonistic relationship three decades ago when the United States armed anti-government rebels in Angola’s civil war. Trade between the United States and Angola totaled $1.77 billion last year, while the United States has a stronger interest in regional security through its strategic presence on the Atlantic Ocean and Lourenço’s role as mediator in this matter. a conflict in eastern Congo.

In Angola, Biden will announce new developments in health, agribusiness, security cooperation as well as the Lobito Corridor, White House officials said on an advance call with journalists.

The visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president to Angola, “will highlight the remarkable evolution of the relationship between the United States and Angola,” said Frances Brown, special assistant to the president and senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. a separate call.

It will also draw attention to an ongoing challenge to U.S. values-based diplomacy in Africa. International rights groups used Biden’s trip to criticize the Lourenço government authoritarian change. Political opponents have been imprisoned and reportedly tortured, while security and other laws have been passed in Angola that severely restrict freedoms, casting some control over Washington’s new African partnership.

___

Associated Press writers Will Weissert aboard Air Force One and Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this report.