US President Joe Biden will visit a US-funded African development project on Wednesday that combines his personal love of railways with his desire to leave a legacy on the continent that will outlive his administration.
The Lobito Corridor is a 1,300 kilometer railway line that runs from the copper-rich country of Zambia to the port of Lobito in the southwestern nation of Angola.
The network will form a “strategic economic corridor” under the Biden administration’s Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership, an initiative aimed at countering China’s Belt and Road Initiativewell established and expanding. So far, the Biden administration says it has committed nearly $4 billion to the project.
Biden, in Angola’s capital on Tuesday, introduced the project through his love of passenger rail. As a United States senator, he traveled to Washington from Wilmington, Delaware, logging, he said, nearly 210 miles on each trip.
“I have to tell you up front that, with the American press here, I’m probably the most pro-railroad guy in the United States,” Biden said Tuesday in Angola’s capital, to laughter from the audience gathered to hear him speak at the museum of the slavery of the country.
Same or different?
Senior administration officials said this rail line, by the end of the decade, will extend its entire length from Africa’s Indian Ocean coast to the Atlantic port. Initially, it will transport critical minerals such as cobalt and copper from the continent’s deep interior to the coast. When the corridor is completed, a journey that now takes more than 40 days by road can be completed – and across the continent – in 40 hours.
“The premise behind the corridor is to be able to take American support and financial capabilities that are limited, and concentrate them more deeply in one area, rather than spreading that financial support and effort to many countries,” said a senior Biden administration official. who was not identified, a common practice when briefing journalists.
The Voice of America He asked the official if this repeats the old colonial narrative of exploiting the continent’s rich natural resources without adding value or providing stable work to local populations. A growing youth population on the continent has created an urgent need for jobs, putting pressure on many African governments.
“I don’t agree with the premise that this is for raw products,” the official responded. “Right now, only raw products come out. But I think what this railroad does, to get to higher value products, you need a few things. One of them is affordable, reliable and abundant energy. So, the construction of the energy system allows us to generate added value.”
Others questioned whether this American effort, which comes more than a decade after China launched its ambitious Belt and Road initiative, can compete.
“On closer inspection, it appears to be a copycat of China’s playbook, which tacitly acknowledges that Washington lags behind Beijing in terms of investment in Africa, but does little to fill the gap in China’s footprint,” he said. Chris O. Ògúnmọ́dẹdé, editor, consultant and analyst of African politics, security and international relations.
Wang Peng, a researcher at Renmin University of China, published in a Chinese state think tank, the Center for International Cooperation, that Western international projects such as the Lobito Corridor do not pose a challenge to China’s initiative because the United States “does not can provide sufficient funds and material conditions to truly implement its ambitious global infrastructure plan.”
Wang Peng also noted that the United States could undermine it by putting diplomatic pressure on host countries to force them to break cooperation agreements with China; exaggerating the negative impact of the Belt and Road project on the local ecological environment and water resources… and exaggerating the problem of the so-called “debt trap”.
Rising Chinese debt among African nations is something Biden also indirectly mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday, trying to present the United States as a reliable partner.
“We have also pushed to ensure that developing nations do not have to choose between paying off unsustainable debt and being able to invest in their own people,” he said.
But, as Biden also said, his time is running out as he prepares to leave office, which President-elect Donald Trump will take office in January. Analysts say this project may be welcomed by Trump as it fits his more transactional approach to the continent and attracts one of Trump’s biggest backers, billionaire Elon Musk.
“The money has already been allocated after all,” said James Murphy of Clark University in Massachusetts. “Continuing with the Lobito project is a smart idea: Trump has no business owning it except in the sense that it gives him a talking point about our strategic/resource-driven interests in Africa, particularly as a strategy to acquire essential minerals for Elon’s Teslas, so to speak.”
[Paris Huang contribuyó a este informe]
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