In Angola, Blinken, a former Cold War rival, is praising U.S. investments

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken concluded a four-nation tour of Africa on Thursday with a visit to Angola, an oil-rich former Cold War battlefield that has become the site of a battle for 21st century economic influence.

During his visit to the coastal capital Luanda, Mr. Blinken highlighted major U.S. investments in Angola, including more than $900 million for solar projects and $250 million to modernize a rail corridor that carries crucial minerals, including cobalt and copper, from Central Africa transports. to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola.

These solar investments help advance President Biden's climate agenda, while the transportation improvements advance his goal of diversifying U.S. supply chains — in part to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese control over the essential ingredients for a modern economy.

Just over two decades since the end of Angola's civil war, which killed perhaps a million people, the country has rebuilt, modernized and developed friendly relations with Washington, which once financed rebels against a government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba. .

Speaking at a news conference alongside Téte António, Angola's foreign minister, Mr Blinken said US-Angolan relations were at the “strongest” point in their history.

Unspoken were Angola's economic ties with China, which has loaned Angola nearly $43 billion.

These financial ties between Beijing and Luanda are one of several relationships that have alarmed U.S. military officials, who warn that China is trying to establish a naval base with access to the Atlantic Ocean.

In March 2022, America's top commander for Africa, Stephen J. Townsend, said he was most concerned that Equatorial Guinea would grant China such a base, but that Beijing had made progress toward that goal in other African countries. Some analysts include Angola on that list.

U.S. officials are quietly lobbying West African countries to deny China a military presence in the Atlantic, said Cameron Hudson, who served as the National Security Council's director of African affairs during the Bush administration. He noticed that all four of Mr. Blinken's stops this week – which also includes Cape Verde, Ivory Coast and Nigeria – have Atlantic coasts.

Chinese bases were not a specific topic of Mr. Blinken's discussions this week, but the generally closer ties with Africa that the Biden administration has developed, including through the new investments in Angola, are making it easier for other officials to to file a case against worrying Chinese. military influence.

Rather than talking openly about China, Mr. Blinken's trip placed much emphasis on what officials called an effort to treat African countries as partners and not as pieces on a global chessboard, which is the view among Biden officials reflected that Africans hate being treated like pawns. in a kind of new Cold War with Beijing, or with Russiawhich recently expanded its interests in Africa through the Wagner mercenary group.

But Africans themselves raised the issue of geopolitical competition more than once during Mr. Blinken's visit. In Ivory Coast's capital, Abidjan, a local television reporter told Mr. Blinken: “Africa appears to have become a battleground for influence among the major powers in recent years. At what point do we think about the future of Africans?”

“It is not our place to tell them to choose,” Mr. Blinken responded. “On the contrary, we are all about presenting a good choice. And then people will decide.”

Without mentioning China by name, Mr. Blinken noted that “some countries” might lend money to African countries that would create unsustainable debt, and that these other countries might import workers instead of hiring locals. U.S. investments, on the other hand, can “lift everyone up,” he said.

In Angola, Biden administration officials seemed especially proud of U.S. support for the Lobito Corridor rail project, which they see as a model for a planned wave of U.S. investment in the continent. The corridor will contribute to Mr Biden's agenda to “de-risk” US dependence on crucial 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 that country's supply mined by China.

U.S. officials say the rail corridor, also funded by the European Union and African entities, will boost African economic growth in the long term by attracting related investments. And they expect it to be profitable, unlike some of the big Chinese infrastructure investments spawned by the “Belt and Roadinitiative over the past ten years.

The project, they say, will also create jobs at home, furthering Biden's goal of “a foreign policy for the middle class.” Work on the 800 plus miles The corridor's 186 bridges will use American steel and create 600 direct jobs, according to a fact sheet from Acrow, a U.S. bridge construction company participating in the project.

Speaking in Luanda, a port city where oil tankers steam in and out of port, Mr. Blinken said the rail project has “truly transformative potential” for Angola and the region.

Another question that came up more than once during the trip was whether Mr. Biden would keep his promise in 2022 to visit Africa itself.

Asked Thursday whether the president could visit yet, Mr. Blinken said his boss would “welcome the opportunity” to visit. “Of course we have elections in the United States this year, so there are scheduling issues,” he added.