LUANDA, Angola (AP) — President Joe Biden arrived for his long-awaited first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa on Monday to the cheers of thousands in Angola, where he will highlight an ambitious U.S.-backed railway project meant to counter China’s influence on the continent of over 1.4 billion people.
Biden’s three-day visit to Angola will focus largely on the Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment in Zambia, Congo and Angola. It aims to advance the U.S. presence in a region rich in the critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices and clean energy technologies.
Biden’s trip comes weeks before Republican Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, finally delivering on Biden’s pledge to visit sub-Saharan Africa. On his way to Angola, he stopped in the Atlantic Ocean island nation of Cape Verde for a brief, closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva.
Biden plans to meet with Angolan President João Lourenço in the capital, Luanda, where crowds lined the streets for his arrival, and visit the National Slavery Museum. He also will travel to the Atlantic port city of Lobito for a look at the rail project. He will announce new developments on health, agribusiness and security, White House officials said.
Biden had been expected to visit Africa last year after reviving the U.S.-Africa Summit in December 2022. The trip was pushed back to 2024 and delayed again this October because of Hurricane Milton, reinforcing a sentiment among some Africans that their continent is still low priority for Washington.
The last U.S. president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015. Biden did attend a United Nations climate summit in Egypt in North Africa in 2022.
“I just kind of push back on the premise that this is some Johnny-come-lately trip at the very end,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on board Air Force One on the way to Angola, noting that top administration officials had visited Africa, including Vice President Kamala Harris. “This is something he (Biden) has been focused on since he became president of the United States.”
A new strategy
Critical minerals are a key field for U.S.-China competition, and China has a stranglehold on Africa’s critical minerals.
The U.S. has for years built relations in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. The 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) railway upgrade is a different move and has shades of China’s Belt and Road foreign infrastructure strategy.
The Biden administration has called the corridor one of the president’s signature initiatives, yet Lobito’s future and any change in U.S. engagement with the continent depends on the incoming administration of President-elect 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 focused on Donald Trump.”
A fit for Trump’s vision?
The U.S. has committed $3 billion to the Lobito Corridor and related projects,