President Biden’s long-awaited trip to Africa to celebrate a win over China

Joe Biden left for Angola on Sunday, keeping a promise to visit Africa while he is president. The trip will focus on a big U.S.-backed railway project that aims to keep important minerals from going to China.

The project, which was partly paid for by a loan from the United States, connects the resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to the port of Lobito in Angola on the Atlantic Ocean. This makes it easy and quick to send goods to the West.

Minerals like copper and cobalt, which are found in large amounts in Congo and are important parts of batteries and other technology, are at risk. China is the most important player in Congo, which is making Washington more and more worried.

In September, China made a deal with Tanzania and Zambia to bring back a competing train line to the eastern coast of Africa.

Two people who worked for Trump in the past say that when he gets back to the White House in January, Trump will likely support the railway and continue to be close with Angola, while Biden’s trip is happening in the last few days of his presidency.

Ambassador Tibor Nagy, who retired after a long career and was Trump’s top envoy to Africa, said that Trump will probably have two main worries about Africa. One is competing with China and Russia, and the other is getting to minerals that are important for the economy.

In an interview, he talked about the Lobito Atlantic Railway and said, “These check both boxes.”

Trafigura, a global commodities trader, Mota-Engil (MOTA.LS), a Portuguese building group, and Vecturis, a railway company, are all behind the project.

The 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) train network from Lobito to Congo has been fixed up with a $550 million loan from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation.

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The White House said Biden would first fly to Angola, but he would also stop for a short time in Cape Verde in West Africa to meet Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva. During the two-day trip, he will stop at the Lobito port on Wednesday and visit the National Museum of Slavery in Luanda, the capital.

One of many promises he made to Africa is kept by this trip. Others, like giving Africa two permanent places on the U.N. Security Council, are still not done.

Besides the railroad project, Washington hasn’t done much to improve access to large mineral deposits in Africa that it says are important for national security. It has also caused other political problems.

It lost the US’s main spy base in Niger this summer and hasn’t been able to find a partner that will take it over. The U.S. no longer has a military presence in the huge Sahel area, which has become a hotspot for Islamist terrorism.

Angola has had strong ties with China and Russia for a long time, but it has recently become more close to the West. Angolan leaders say they are willing to work with anyone who can help them reach their goals for economic growth. They also hope that the project will encourage investment in many areas.

At a meeting, Ricardo Viegas d’Abreu, Angola’s transport minister, said, “China has become more important because Western countries have probably not been paying much attention to Africa.”

GETTING CLOSE TO ANGOLA

After a long and bloody past, Biden’s visit shows that U.S. relations with Angola have changed for the better. During the country’s 27-year civil war, the US and the USSR backed different sides. In 1993, almost twenty years after Angola became independent, Washington started to work with it.

“Perhaps it’s poetic justice that the US should pay to fix up this route that it destroyed so many years ago,” said Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika, a former minister in the Zambian government who also ran part of the railway that will become the Lobito corridor.

The Lobito train project is not a one-time thing, according to the Biden administration. They say it is a test run to show that the private-public partnership works, and it will lead to other big infrastructure projects in Africa. They also hope that it will strengthen ties between the U.S. and Angola, especially when it comes to working together on security issues.

Some people aren’t sure if the project, which doesn’t have a set end date, will meet its goals. A second step that would connect the railway to Africa’s east coast and go all the way to Tanzania is getting a lot of attention. This could create a rival route to China.

Before he was fired, Biden’s top Africa aide, Judd Devermont, said that Congo wants to expand its mining partners and disagreed with the idea that linking the project to an eastern port in Tanzania would hurt efforts to loosen Beijing’s control over its minerals.

“The Congolese have made it very clear that they don’t want China to control all of their mining,” he said in an interview. “An easy way to move across the continent is good for everyone, whether it’s important minerals or just moving things from India to Brazil to New York.”