(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden touted his administration’s ties with Angola, including investment in a railway to deliver critical minerals across the continent, as he met with Angolan President João Lourenço on Tuesday.
The two leaders discussed “significant trade and investment opportunities that keep our companies competitive and defend the interests of workers,” according to a readout of the meeting provided by the White House.
A centerpiece of those efforts is the Lobito project, a railway being revamped with the aim of expediting the shipment of critical minerals for technology such as electric vehicles from the Democratic Republic of Congo to a port on Angola’s Atlantic coast. The initiative is part of a US effort to stem Chinese influence on the continent.
Biden “underscored the significance of the more than $3 billion in U.S. commitments to infrastructure projects in Angola in support of the Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor, a multinational initiative to help accelerate inclusive economic growth and connect markets along the Corridor to the world,” the White House said.
Biden did not mention China by name during opening remarks before reporters at the start of the meeting, but he mentioned the impact of the initiative, saying that it would build “railroads, ocean to ocean” to “connect the continent.”
Angola’s oil industry — which accounts for some 90% of the country’s export revenue — sells more than half its output to China. And Beijing has pledged more than $1 billion to refurbish an alternate route for minerals and other cargo east into Tanzania and the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam—a line originally built under Mao Zedong.
The International Development Finance Corp. has approved $553 million to help upgrade the Lobito railway.
The US president later Tuesday visited Angola’s National Slavery Museum. The US is giving $229,000 to restore the building’s galleries. Angola was a central hub of the transatlantic slave trade.
In his address at the museum, Biden acknowledged the US’s historical link to Angola during the slave trade, pointing to members of a family who were in attendance and who descended from one of the first enslaved Africans to have been shipped to Virginia from Angola.
He also spoke about the strengthening relationship between the two nations and cited the goals of the Lobito project, from transporting essential minerals to how it could help African countries with agricultural trade.
China didn’t come up in Biden’s conversation with Lourenço earlier Tuesday, according to a senior administration official.
But in his speech at the museum, Biden subtly hinted at the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies to have stronger ties and access with the mineral-rich continent.
“We’ve also pushed to ensure that developing nations don’t have to choose” between “paying down unsustainable debt and being able to invest in its own people,” Biden said.
Biden is scheduled to travel to Lobito on Wednesday to meet with Lourenço as well as the leaders of Congo, Tanzania and Zambia.
READ: The Billion-Dollar Railways Driving Biden’s Last Overseas Trip
Under Lourenço, who became president in 2017, Angola has sought to reduce its dependence on China.
The US has provided $2.9 billion in financing in Angola for its energy, infrastructure and telecommunications sectors, according to the White House.
Biden and Lourenço on Tuesday also discussed strengthening democracy in Angola and around the world and “celebrated the continued growth of the U.S.-Angola defense relationship,” according to the White House.
Biden is the first US president to visit Africa south of the Sahara in nearly a decade and the first sitting US leader to visit Angola. His landmark Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 is centered around the proliferation of electric vehicles and clean energy.
He promised to visit the continent after hosting a 2022 summit with African leaders in Washington. But his trip was clouded by two factors: his late Sunday evening announcement that he pardoned his son Hunter Biden and last month’s election of President-elect Donald Trump.
Domestically, the pardon sparked bipartisan criticism after Biden had earlier maintained that he wouldn’t issue one for his son. The president hasn’t taken reporter questions since the Sunday announcement before he departed to Africa. He ignored shouted questions on Tuesday.
Internationally, it’s unclear whether Trump will continue Biden’s foreign policies, including in Africa. The incumbent president nodded at such in his closing remarks at the museum.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I’m in the final weeks of my presidency, you don’t have to clap for that. You can if you want,” Biden said. “Although I don’t know exactly what the future will hold. I know the future runs through Angola, through Africa.”
--With assistance from Matthew Hill.
(Updates with Biden remarks throughout)
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