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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Thursday ended a four-country tour of Africa with a visit to Angola, an oil-rich, Cold War-era battleground and site of 21st century struggles for economic influence. .
During a visit to the coastal capital Luanda, Mr. Blinken announced more than $900 million in solar energy projects and more than $250 million to upgrade a rail corridor that transports critical minerals such as cobalt and copper from central Africa. , focused on major U.S. investments in Angola. To Angola’s Atlantic port of Lobito.
These solar investments will help advance President Biden’s climate change agenda, and the transportation improvements will further the president’s goal of diversifying the U.S. supply chain, in part. It aims to reduce U.S. dependence on China’s control of raw materials essential to the modern economy.
Just over two decades after the end of Angola’s civil war, which killed perhaps a million people, the country has rebuilt friendly relations with Washington, which once financed rebels against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed government. It has been modernized and developed. .
Speaking at a news conference alongside Angola’s Foreign Minister Tete Antonio, Blinken declared that U.S.-Angola relations are at the “strongest” point in history.
Angola’s economic ties with China are tacit, and China has loaned Angola nearly $43 billion.
These economic ties between China and Luanda are among several that have alarmed U.S. military officials, who warn that China is seeking to establish a naval base with access to the Atlantic Ocean.
In March 2022, U.S. Commander in Chief for Africa Stephen J. Townsend said he was most concerned about Equatorial Guinea giving China such bases, but that China had no plans to pursue that goal in other African countries. He said he is making progress. Some analysts have Angola on that list.
Cameron Hudson, who served as the National Security Council’s Africa director during the Bush administration, said U.S. officials were secretly lobbying West African countries to reject China’s military presence along the Atlantic coast. He noted that all four destinations Mr. Blinken visited this week, which also include Cape Verde, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, are on the Atlantic coast.
While Chinese bases were not a specific subject of Blinken’s discussion this week, the Biden administration is forging closer ties with Africa generally, including new investments in Angola. It has become easier for other officials to make their case against a concerned China. military influence.
Blinken’s visit focused less on explicit talk about China and more on authorities’ efforts to treat African countries as partners rather than pawns on a global chessboard, a move that sparked resentment at Africans being treated like pawns. This reflects the view of Biden officials that It is in a kind of new Cold War situation with the Chinese government or with Russia, which has recently expanded its interests in Africa through the Wagner mercenary group.
But Africans themselves also raised the issue of geopolitical competition multiple times during Blinken’s visit. In Ivory Coast’s capital, Abidjan, a local television reporter told Mr. Blinken: “In recent years, Africa seems to have become a battleground for influence between great powers. At what point do we think about the future of Africans?” ?”
Blinken responded: “It’s not for us to say they have to choose.” “On the contrary, the problem for us is to present good options. And then the people will decide.”
Without mentioning China by name, Blinken said “some countries” may lend African countries money that creates unsustainable debt, and that these other countries may hire locals. He pointed out that there is a possibility of importing workers without having to do so. In contrast, U.S. investments “can lead everyone upwards,” he said.
In Angola, Biden administration officials appear to be particularly proud of U.S. support for the Lobito Corridor rail project, which they see as a model for a wave of planned U.S. investment in the continent. ing. The corridor would contribute to Biden’s policy of “de-risking” U.S. dependence on critical minerals controlled by China. The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies more than half of the world’s supply of cobalt, which is used to make lithium-ion batteries.; About three-quarters of the country’s supply is mined by China.
U.S. officials say the rail corridor, which is also funded by the European Union and African entities, will stimulate long-term African economic growth by attracting related investment. And they expect it to be profitable, unlike some of China’s big infrastructure investments generated by Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative over the past decade.
They say the project will also create jobs at home and advance Biden’s goal of a “foreign policy for the middle class.” Commit to driving over 800 miles The corridor’s 186 bridges will use American steel and create 600 direct jobs, according to a fact sheet from Acrow, the American bridge construction company participating in the project.
Speaking in the port city of Luanda, where oil tankers enter and exit the port, Blinken said the rail project had “truly transformative potential” for Angola and the region.
Another question that came up repeatedly during the trip was whether Biden would keep his promise to visit Africa himself in 2022.
Asked Thursday whether the president might visit in the future, Blinken said his boss would “welcome the opportunity” to visit. “Of course, the US has elections this year, so there are challenges to the schedule,” he added.
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