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Why is Joe Biden in Angola?

US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Angolan President João Lourenço at the Presidential Palace in Luanda, Angola, on Dec. 3, 2024.

US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Angolan President João Lourenço at the Presidential Palace in Luanda, Angola, on Dec. 3, 2024.

REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksDecember 03, 2024
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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With seven weeks left as US president, why was Joe Biden in Angola on Tuesday to meet with President João Lourenço? It’s the very first visit of a US president to this former Portuguese colony – now a player in global energy markets. More importantly, Biden was following through on a plan to compete more effectively with China across much of Africa. Via its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has invested heavily in sub-Saharan African infrastructure, and Biden has long argued that competing for those opportunities is good for America’s economy.

There’s also a security angle here. Angola isn’t just oil-rich; it has large reserves of copper and is home to large deposits of critical minerals, like the lithium and cobalt needed to make batteries for electric vehicles. That’s an arena of intense US-China competition.

The main focus for Biden this week is his proposed 835-mile rail line to connect the cobalt, lithium, and copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper-belt region of Zambia with the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic, from which these increasingly precious commodities can be exported to the US and Europe. Construction of the so-called Lobito Corridor is not yet underway.

Angola and many other sub-Saharan African countries have an angle here too. Lourenço knows that competition among China, the US, Russia, Japan, Europe, and others for African resources and infrastructure projects can give African leaders a negotiating leverage they don’t yet have.

Lourenço and Biden can both hope that incoming US President Donald Trump will see the value of these projects as new investment opportunities that score points against China.

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