WASHINGTON — When U.S. President Joe Biden visits Angola in early December, he will put into focus his legacy infrastructure project aimed at securing crucial supply chains on the African continent. Called the Lobito Corridor, the project is the centerpiece of his administration’s strategy to counter China’s clout in global development.
The Lobito Corridor is a $5 billion investment across multiple sectors that is intended to revitalize and extend the 1,300-kilometer Benguela railway line. It will connect the 120-year-old Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in its second phase, to Zambia.
Announced in September 2023, much of the corridor’s financing comes from the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. The PGI is a Biden-led 2022 initiative from the Group of Seven wealthiest economies that evolved from his Build Back Better World plan launched in 2021 as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Once operational, it will boost access to critical minerals for the United States and its partners, including cobalt and copper, that are essential in electric vehicle manufacturing. According to a U.S. congressional report, 80% of the DRC’s copper mines are Chinese owned. China is responsible for mining 85% of the DRC’s rare earth minerals, including 76% of its cobalt.
The Lobito Corridor is expected to cut transportation costs, open access to arable agricultural land and drive climate-resilient economic growth, Helaina Matza, acting special coordinator for the PGI at the U.S. Department of State, said Tuesday in a briefing to reporters.
The PGI’s investments will “amplify the impact of that infrastructure” with projects such as developing solar energy, local electricity networks and desalination efforts, she said.
The project is championed by Angolan President Joao Lourenco. Angola owes about $17 billion to China, more than a third of its total debt. The debt is mostly in the form of infrastructure development loans, backed by oil, that funded the country’s economic recovery following three decades of civil war that ended in 2002.
PGI to counter BRI
Since launching the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, in 2013, China has become the main backer of global development financing. In Africa, Beijing has signed loan commitments with 49 African governments and seven regional institutions.
From 2013 to 2021, China provided $679 billion for infrastructure projects around the world, according to a U.S. government analysis, while the U.S. provided $76 billion.
The U.S., alongside G7 partners, announced in 2022 that the PGI aims to mobilize $600 billion by 2027 as an alternative to infrastructure financing models that are “often opaque, fail to uphold environmental and social standards, exploit workers and leave the recipient countries worse off.”
That’s a lot of financing to catch up to in a few years, and Lobito is “the first and the most developed” project in that effort, said Witney Schneidman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“That’s the A+ project, but I don’t see a whole lot of other projects,” Schneidman told VOA.
The PGI’s other project, the Luzon Corridor, was launched in April to support connectivity between Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas in the Philippines.
In Lobito, the U.S. works mostly with European partners. In Luzon, the U.S. is teaming up with Japan to secure critical industries such as semiconductors.
The White House pushed back against the notion that Biden has scaled back his global infrastructure ambitions to the two corridors.
“We’ve mobilized more than $60 billion, just the U.S., and that’s a part of the larger G7,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA in a briefing earlier this month.
“And that’s not just been for two corridors,” he said. “That’s been for investments across Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.”
US-Africa strategy
In August 2022, the Biden administration launched an Africa strategy that “reframes the region’s importance to U.S. national security interests,” the strategy says.
Later that year, Biden hosted the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, where he pledged the U.S. to invest $55 billion in Africa over three years.
“We are overdelivering on that thus far,” Frances Brown, senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said in a briefing Tuesday. “We’ve invested more than 80% of that commitment.”
But much of that $55 billion was allocated under existing programs and does not bring the kind of megaproject that is “visible to the average African that says the United States financed that in the way that the Chinese do,” said Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Which is why the Lobito Corridor stands out, Dizolele told VOA. It is the “one palpable project that people can look at and say, ‘If this is implemented, then maybe it would move things forward.’”
On a continent where the presence of Chinese financing, businesses and migrants are so prevalent that many African countries teach Mandarin in schools and incorporate Chinese characters in public signage, that’s a start.
Moving forward, activists hope the U.S. will not set aside social and environmental concerns that have besieged projects under Chinese financing.
“We have to ensure that we can hear all stakeholders engaging in the process,” said Sergio Calundungo, founder of the Social Observatory of Angola.
So far, civil society groups have not been invited to the table, but they are ready to ensure that local communities can “share as much as possible the prosperity through this important infrastructure,” he told VOA.
Will it continue?
President-elect Donald Trump will enter office in January. While some are concerned that the U.S. commitment to Africa might falter under his America First doctrine, analysts point to initiatives taken under his first administration.
In 2018, the Trump administration launched Prosper Africa, an initiative that brings together U.S. government services to help investors do business on the continent. In 2019, it launched the Blue Dot Network, an international certification mechanism to ensure infrastructure projects meet environmental and social standards.
They were aware that infrastructure investments needed “to foster economic growth, to foster stability, but also for U.S. interests globally when competing with China,” said Joseph Lemoine, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. “I’m hopeful that they will continue those efforts,” he told VOA.
Trump also launched the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation in 2020. The DFC is an agency that functions as America’s development bank, with $60 billion in lending capacity.
DFC’s first CEO, Adam Boehler, a college roommate of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, spoke openly of linking development aid to foreign policy goals. In a 2020 interview, he admitted promising $2 billion for Indonesia should the country agree to join the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords and recognize Israel.
“If you listen to all the Trump people, they want a foreign policy that’s transactional,” Schneidman at Brookings said.
Trump has promised to take a confrontational approach to China. Analysts say aligning infrastructure financing needs with Trump’s foreign policy goals may be an element in the U.S.-China rivalry that developing nations can leverage.
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