From right: Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, US President Joe Biden, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and Tanzania’s Vice President Philip Isdor Mpango walk together, during a visit to a Carrinho facility, near Lobito in Angola, on December 4, 2024.
President Joe Biden’s visit to Angola this week, the first by an American president, has rekindled the economic rivalry with China, with scholars pointing out that the new scramble for Africa is replete with empty promises.
Beijing sees Biden’s touting of the transborder Lobito Corridor in Southern Africa as an opportunity to counter Chinese clout in the region by advancing a plan to extend a railway that could channel critical minerals from Angola, Congo and Zambia to the West via Lobito and Dar es Salaam.
Chinese media dismissed the trip as a rubber cheque Washington has made in Africa, “and it will not be the last”.
An article published by Xinhua cited Biden’s pledge to continue supporting Kenya in building a 440km highway connecting Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa, with a projected investment of $3.6 billion.
“A similar project which was agreed upon between Kenya and the United States back in 2017 and expected to be completed in 2024 had never broken ground. In recent years, the DRC and Zambia signed separate memorandums of understanding with the United States and the EU, aiming to establish special economic zones to process raw minerals into battery components and other preliminary products. But progress remains elusive.”
The US and China interests on the continent have largely been driven by the availability of minerals, which have informed the need for infrastructure projects that would ease the shipping of cobalt, uranium, lithium and nickel.
And, despite the existence of this wealth, African countries, even those that produce them, remain poor. Africa is shipping them out in large quantities with no adequate compensation from both the West and East.
Africa holds over 40 per cent of the world’s reserves of these transition minerals, with the DRC alone hosting 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a key element for electric vehicle batteries.
Most of our minerals are exported raw — 57 per cent to China alone — with the value-added elsewhere. These resources are the building blocks for batteries, solar panels, and electric vehicles — the backbone of the global energy transition that has attracted both Biden and China’s Xi Jinping.
In Angola, Biden pledged $600 million for the Lobito project and, in what seemed to be a response to the latest largesse from Washington, China has its own pledges.
The US and China have been making development promises to Africa and observers say they are just mere pledges to woo the continent to pick a side in their economic duel.
The Lobito Corridor, a railway network spanning over 2,000km and connecting Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Zambia, seems to have attracted the US, EU and China as they vie for the minerals critical for the green energy transition.
The project backed by the West includes the 1,344km Benguela Railway, and a new greenfield railway planned as a branch line from Angola’s existing network into northern Zambia.
Tanzania has also been roped into the project, offering a link between the Atlantic on the Angolan coast to the Indian Ocean in Dar.
A meeting between Biden and the presidents of the stakeholder countries, João Lourenço (Angola), Hakainde Hichilema (Zambia), Felix Tshisekedi (DRC) and Tanzania Vice-President Philip Mpango acknowledged the project’s unique opportunity for regional integration and economic transformation for the communities living along it.
Green technology
The corridor aims to link Africa’s resource-rich copper belt to the seaports, reflecting America’s efforts to seek dominance in key components of green technology, where Washington lags behind global competitors such as China.
But worrying developments in the DRC and Angola paint a different picture that the Lobito corridor could fail to live up to the promise.
By July 2022, Angola announced that a Western consortium had secured the bid, leading to the establishment of the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) company to oversee the project. But mining companies in the DRC pointed out that the LAR has yet no plans to refurbish or construct this critical portion.
Consequently, the Lobito Corridor risks becoming a “dead-end line” that fails to deliver the anticipated economic benefits.
The Chinese suggest that the project, “though presented as an economic initiative, may primarily be a US rubber check to African countries”.
Kenyan scholar Cavince Adhere agrees with the Chinese sentiment, noting that Angola is only a platform for the US to project its global economic visibility, “rather than a desire to drive inclusive development in Africa in a manner that can safeguard security and safety of ordinary people in Africa”.
Quoiting a March report by Africa Intelligence, a Paris-based publication focusing on African affairs, the Chinese have noted that the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a state agency financing the project, has also doubted the viability of the greenfield railway.
“The DFC has been studying the commercial interest of the Angola-Zambia segment since last July but is not convinced of its relevance. It would require the construction of an entirely new railway line in both countries, which would be much more expensive than rehabilitating the existing Angolan and Congolese lines,” the report said.
But the West is optimistic and determined to make it work, if only to stop the Chinese march in the region, where it is also financing the refurbishment of the 48-year-old, 1,860km Tanzania-Zambia Railway (Tazara) line running from Dar to Kapiri Moshi in central Zambia, a copper producer.
Yet the future of this interest may depend on US President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to chart his own course in dealing with Africa.
Pundits are agreed that Africa is not a priority for the Trump White House, although the race for the critical metals might be sustained.
Moreover, given that past US promises to African nations often lacked follow-through, many fear the initiative could become yet another empty promise.
For instance, the Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway project, which was agreed on back in 2017 and expected to be completed in 2024, had never broken ground until Washington renewed the promise in May during President Ruto’s state visit.
It appears to be back on track after Everstrong Capital signed a project development agreement with the Kenya National Highways Authority. It is not clear whether it will eventually take off.
Another project that appeared to be an empty promise by the US is the planned Moderna facility in Kenya.
On April 11, 2024, Moderna announced that it had paused a $200 million plan to build a vaccine production plant in Kenya. Given little demand for Covid vaccines in Africa, the plans are unlikely to be resurrected.
In its cancellation announcement, Moderna stated that demand in Africa “is insufficient to support the viability of the factory planned in Kenya.”
Yet, in spite of its harsh criticism of the Americans, China itself has not kept its promises to the continent.
During the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping pledged to give all least developed countries having diplomatic relations with China, including 33 countries in Africa, zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines.
Addressing delegates from more than 50 African nations gathered in Beijing for the forum, he said 210 billion yuan ($29.6 billion) of the financing would be disbursed through credit lines and at least 70 billion yuan ($9.9 billion) in new investment by Chinese companies, with smaller amounts provided through military aid and other projects.
The financial assistance would be in yuan, in an apparent bid to further internationalise the Chinese currency.
He also called for a China-Africa network of land and sea links and coordinated development.
“We have together built roads, railways, schools, hospitals, industrial parks and special economic zones. These projects have changed the lives and destiny of many people,” Xi told African leaders.
But there have been little efforts on the ground by China to grant zero-tariff treatment for 100 per cent tariff lines for African products.
Funding promises
At Focac, President Xi pledged to step up China’s support to the continent with funding of nearly $51 billion, backing for more infrastructure initiatives and a promise to create at least a million jobs.
Experts warn that the funding promises could remain just so, unless Africans take advantage of the US-China rivalry on the continent.
John Mbaku, Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics and Attorney and Counsellor at Law at Weber State University, US, says it is important that Africa to understand the political consideration of the US-China and then explain them to policy makers so that they can approach this relationship in a much more robust manner.
“Because the US and China governments, like governments in any country, their first priority is to maximise their interests at home and abroad. It is therefore very important to understand the US interests in the region,” he said.
The Biden administration’s US-Africa strategy, released in August, 2022, notes that “Sub-Saharan Africa’s governments, institutions, and people will play a critical role in solving global challenges.”
In discussing other countries’ growing engagement with Africa, the strategy starkly assesses that China views Africa as “an important arena to challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness, and weaken US relations with African peoples and governments.”
The US-Africa strategy paints a picture of one that is based more on the Chinese influence in Africa rather than what Africa really needs.
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