Angola: US President Joe Biden has made his first trip to an African country. He is on his maiden visit to Angola this week and before that he stopped for a little in Cape Verde.
This is his first ever bilateral trip to Africa as President of America, which is happening just before a week, leaving the post to successor Donald Trump.
United States President Joe Biden arrived in Angola on Monday, Dec 02, 2024, after a brief stop in the West African Nation of Cape Verde. The three-day trip to Angola represents a final desperate attempt to fulfil a promise made by Biden long ago.
The objective of the trip is to counter the expanding influence of China on the whole African continent of over 1.4 billion people.
At his sub-Saharan African visit to Angola, President Biden will highlight the ambitious US-backed Railway project. The three-day visit will focus majorly on the Lobito Corridor Railway Redevelopment in Zambia, Congo and Angola.
This visit aims at advancing the presence of US in a region which is rich in the critical minerals that is used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices as well as the clean energy technologies.
Furthermore, Joe Biden’s trip has occurred weeks before Republican Donald Trump takes over office on Jan 20, that finally delivers his pledge to visit sub-Saharan Africa. His little stay in the Atlantic Ocean Island Nation of Cape Verde was arranged for a brief closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva.
Joe Biden is using the first trip, also to promote investments of Washington in the sub-Saharan African Nation and see a slavery museum where he will acknowledge the trafficking of human beings that once linked the economies of the two nations.
The best part of his trip is that it will showcase the commitment of US for Lobito Corridor worth $3 billion, linking Zambia, Congo and Angola. The Railway redevelopment project is meant to make it easier to move raw materials in the continent and for export.
However, the project has also drawn financing from the European Union, the Group of Seven Leading Industrialized Nations, a Western-led Private Consortium and African Banks.
Reportedly, Biden fulfilled the promise that he made at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, where 49 African Leaders gathered and he declared that the US “is all in on Africa and all in with Africa.”
During that time, he also announced a supportive package of $55 billion for the African Union.
As per the reports, US President Joe Biden has failed to visit any African country, except Egypt for COP27 in November 2022, and until now this shows that his administration has not prioritised the continent Africa.
Earlier, Biden first promised to visit Africa in December 2022, that marked two years into his presidency, but some analysts noted that it was already too late.