PREVIEW
The president’s visit to Africa shows Washington’s geopolitical rivals – the railway project will be using Chinese-made locomotives and moving Chinese-mined minerals
The big announcement of Joe Biden’s first and last United States presidential visit to Africa instead underscored Washington’s severely diminished influence on the continent.
Following an informal summit with Presidents Félix Tshisekedi, Hakainde Hichilema and João Lourenço on 4 December, the White House pledged an additional US$600 million in financing for projects related to the Lobito Corridor, the 1,300-kilometre railway line connecting the mineral and oil-rich parts of Angola, Zambia and Congo-Kinshasa. That will take US investment in the project to over $4 billion, the White House says (Dispatches, 27/11/24, Expanding the Lobito corridor).
The Lobito Corridor project is one of few foreign policy items that has bipartisan support in Washington and is likely to be pursued by Biden’s successor Donald Trump.
But China’s statement that it will offer tariff- and quota-free trade to another 25 African states highlighted the paucity of the US offer.
Republican Africanists close to Trump have indicated that his focus on rivalling China makes it likely that he will expand the project (AC Vol 65 No 23, Leaders look for deals in the Trump marketplace).
No date has been given for the completion of the Lobito rail network, while a second phase that would link Lobito to Zambia via a new railway line is still at the preparation stage, with a view to breaking ground in 2026. Briefing reporters in Angola, US officials indicated that the railway network could be completed by 2030.
The weakness of the project – and the US offer to the countries concerned – is that its primary aim is to take minerals out of Africa. Promises by the US and EU’s International Partnerships Commissioner Jozef Síkela to ‘diversify energy supply chains while creating local jobs’ are yet to materialise. Also absent are plans to develop refinement and the processing of minerals, areas where Beijing is many years ahead of the game.
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