President Joe Biden will become the first sitting president to visit Angola this week as he aims to deepen the relationship between the two countries and highlight recent investments as an alternative to the growing support from China.
Biden’s visit also marks the first visit to Africa of a U.S. president since then-President Barack Obama went to Kenya and Ethiopia in July 2015.
His trip, scheduled for Dec. 2 through Dec. 4, will begin with a bilateral meeting with Angolan President João Lourenço in the capital of Luanda, according to a senior administration official previewing the trip. They last met in December 2023 in the Oval Office.
Angolan President Joao Lourenco and President Biden during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Nov. 30, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
Biden will deliver remarks in Luanda laying out “both our shared history and highlight the growth and enduring strength of our relationships in Angola and across the continent,” according to the official.
He will also announce new deliverables related to global health security, agribusiness, security cooperation and preserving Angola’s cultural heritage.
In 2022, the United States pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa over three years, and a senior administration official said 80% of that commitment has already been met.
“Over the last couple of years, in Angola, through U.S. government investment, there has been an added more telecommunications, more people are getting connected to 3G and now building out 5G networks, as well as building out renewable energy,” the official said. “In fact, the U.S. has approved financing through [the Export-Import Bank] of nearly $2.5 billion of renewable energy projects that will be able to take countries from energy deficit to energy exporters to their neighbors.”
Angolan President Joao Lourenco in Pretoria on June 19, 2024.
Phill Magakoe/POOL/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The Biden administration has been trying to counter China’s growing influence in Africa and sizable commitments of their own, including $50 billion in support announced in September that would go toward infrastructure and at least 1 million jobs.
The official added that “we don’t think it’s a bad thing” for China to invest in Africa but warned about what could happen in the long run with that support, opposed to “meaningful” investments offered by the U.S.
“If it means that at the end of a few years of investment, the communities that live in the area of the investment have not seen any increase in GDP, that they’ve not seen benefits of their lives in it, that it has not lifted the lives of the communities, if it means that the government is going to be living under crushing debt for generations to come … then the government’s going to have to make the decision whether that’s the alternative they want,” the official said.
“What we have heard repeatedly over years is that people want to have more — people in Africa want to have more alternatives for investment, not less. But if they don’t have the alternative, they are forced to go with the with the one investment they have.”
Biden is squeezing in this trip with less than two months to go before leaving office after promising to visit back in 2022. Senior administration officials said he has wanted to make this trip for a long time. While that was being worked on, over 20 Cabinet-level and senior officials traveled to the continent in the past two years, including Vice President Kamala Harris in March of 2023.
