President Biden makes long awaited trip to Africa

LAGOS, Nigeria — President Joe Biden arrived in Angola on Monday, on a delayed trip to Africa, his first and only visit to the continent during the final months of his term in office.

Biden’s trip is the first by an American president since Barack Obama traveled to Kenya and Ethiopia in 2015.

Initially scheduled in October, the President arrived in the West African island of Cabo Verde on Monday, before travelling on to Angola.

This end-of-term effort has widely been seen as partly a response to the long-established economic influence of China, whose trade ties and investments over the last few decades have dwarfed those of the U.S.

The trip fulfills a promise made by Biden to visit the continent during the Africa leaders summit in Washington DC two years ago. It is also the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited either Cabo Verde – a U.S. ally and one of the few stable democracies in West and Central Africa, or Angola – an oil-rich former Portuguese colony that is increasingly an important U.S. partner in the region.

But the trip comes amid the controversy of his decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, of gun and tax convictions and comes at the end of his presidency, less than two months before former President Trump returns to office.

“The message implied by the timing is hard to miss,” said Ken Opalo is assistant professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. “Biden had the time and stamina to visit lots of places during his four years in office, but only found time as a lame duck to visit the region. I think the timing reflects Africa’s overall strategic insignificance from the perspective of Washington foreign policy insiders.”

Biden vowed to put Africa at the centre of U.S. foreign policy and raised expectations for African representation at global institutions like the U.N. Security Council. But many of those expectations have largely not been met, said Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“When the history is written on Biden’s Africa policy, it will be defined by a set of very ambitious expectations for remaking the global order and making sure that Africa is at the centre of that remaking.”

While the African Union, the body representing 55 member states, was given a permanent membership of the G20, an African country has yet to be given a permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council, reflecting poorly on Biden’s commitments, Hudson said.

“We have not seen Africa given a seat at the table,” he said. “We have not seen the reforms of global institutions like the U.N. Security Council or the World Bank that the president has promised and that Washington is in a unique position to help bring about.”

In Angola Biden is expected to announce a number of key trade investments . He is also due to visit the National Slavery museum there, drawing on the shared history of both countries. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were taken from Angola to the United States, during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, with the first documented arrival recorded in Virginia in 1619.

But the cornerstone of Biden’s visit to Angola is the Lobito Corridor, a U.S. backed 1,300-kilometer freight rail line, running from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), connecting to existing links from Zambia to the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. It is seen by officials as a potential US policy success as the corridor eases the export of key minerals like cobalt and copper—resources critical for renewable energy and advanced technology.

The mineral rich region has become the focus of intense competition for access, between China and Western countries. The U.S. says it has raised more than $4 billion investment on the project, from public and private funds.

Biden administration officials sought to improve relations with African countries after Trump’s first term in 2017, following the former president’s disparaging remarks of African countries and an immigration ban from Muslim majority countries.

But while senior Biden administration officials made far more visits to African countries than their predecessors, reports of growing competition between the US and countries like China, the UAE and Turkey do not reflect the reality, Ken Opalo said.

“There is no competition. China has spent almost 20 years forging impactful economic ties with almost all African countries – from trade to financing for infrastructure – while the United States and its European allies mostly viewed the continent through the lens of aid and humanitarian crises.”

Recent US attempts to reset its approach in Africa could be impacted by Trump’s second presidency, while some analysts anticipate his administration is likely to favour economic investments over humanitarian assistance.