On the final day of perhaps his final trip overseas as commander in chief, President Biden celebrated his foreign policy agenda by turning to a piece of infrastructure at the heart of his identity: a train.
It was not the Amtrak train Mr. Biden rode frequently as a senator or chose as the setting for the kickoff of his first presidential campaign nearly four decades ago. Mr. Biden instead toured a section of an 800-mile railway project in Angola that his administration hopes will be the key to expanding U.S. economic influence in Africa, a continent rich with critical minerals.
“I’m coming back to ride on the train from end to end,” Mr. Biden told President João Lourenço of Angola during a round table with African leaders in the port city of Lobito. “We’re not just laying tracks. We’re laying the groundwork for a better future for our people.”
Mr. Biden was spotlighting what is known as the Lobito Corridor, a railway project that his aides say is the proof behind the president’s commitment to be “all in on Africa’s future,” amid growing concern the United States has neglected the continent over the years and allowed China to gain economic dominance in the region.
The project, funded in part by the United States, runs from Angola’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lobito, which sits on the Atlantic Ocean. Mr. Biden has said it will help connect Angola’s economy to nearby markets, including in Zambia. But it is also a means to expand U.S. access to a region rich with critical minerals, like copper and cobalt, used to make batteries for various products, including cellphones and electric vehicles.
Once the railway is complete, it would mean minerals could be more easily shipped to the United States, allowing the country to make progress on its goal of diversifying its supply chains.
But despite Mr. Biden’s victory lap on Wednesday, the United States is still facing an uphill climb when it comes to competing with China for access to critical minerals in the continent, according to foreign policy analysts.
Beijing helped Angola rebuild after a devastating civil war that ended in 2002, and since then, Angola has accumulated more than $42 billion in Chinese debt, more than any other African nation. And while Mr. Biden hopes the new rail line expands access to critical minerals, China currently has firm control over critical minerals in Congo.
Chinese-based mining companies own or have a major stake in most cobalt-producing sites in Congo, which produced 76 percent of the world’s supply of the metal last year. The last large American-owned mining company pulled out of Congo in 2020, just as the electric vehicle revolution was taking off.
“We have never leveraged our economic commercial power the way other nations have,” said Tibor P. Nagy Jr., who was appointed by President Bill Clinton twice to serve as an ambassador in Africa and then by the Trump administration to serve as assistant secretary of state for African affairs. He said “the Biden administration talked a really good game,” but “they have not delivered.”
Mr. Biden has said the railway project would not only diversify the economies of African nations, but also entice manufacturers to build factories along the railway because they can use it to transport goods. As the president traveled to Lobito on Wednesday, his administration announced $560 million in new funding for infrastructure projects along the railway, bringing total U.S. investments by the administration for the project to $4 billion.
The project will also encourage more investment into the region from the private sector, according to the White House. Mr. Biden’s administration is helping to fund the project with federal grants and direct loans that his aides say do not have the kind of high interest rates offered by their Chinese counterparts, which have left African nations crippled with debt, according to the White House.
Edu Xiong, the spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Luanda, the capital of Angola, has countered that few on the ground in Angola have yet to actually feel the economic benefits of the Lobito Corridor.
It is unclear when African nations will be able to reap the full benefits of the project. A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss specific details of the Lobito Corridor, said the rail line in Angola would not be complete until “next year-ish.” Construction of the rail line in Zambia will then begin.
Still, African leaders meeting with Mr. Biden on Wednesday praised the project as a means for benefiting their local economies.
“The political commitment of all engaged people in the materialization of this project is a milestone,” Mr. Lourenço said at the round table inside a food processing factory after Mr. Biden finished touring the yellow shipping containers, giant cranes and railway cars at the Lobito Port Terminal.
Speaking to the leaders at the round table, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia said the project would help more than the countries along the route of the railway.
“Not just us — it’s good for Africa,” he said. “I must say, this project is a huge opportunity.”
But some Angolan officials were concerned that the investment into the railway would be siphoned off by corruption, and not make its way to the working class.
“Lobito Corridor is a very big project. It’s important. But we want transparency, accountability,” said Olívio Nkilumbo, a parliamentarian with the opposition UNITA party in Angola. “Where is the transparency and accountability? It’s a big problem.”
Despite Mr. Biden’s commitments, some foreign policy experts still questioned how enduring the White House’s focus on Africa would be. Mr. Biden’s trip to the continent, his last announced trip overseas, came with just weeks left in his presidency after multiple delays. The trip was also overshadowed by his decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, of tax and gun convictions.
The Trump campaign did not answer questions about what strategy President-elect Donald J. Trump would pursue on the continent. But J. Peter Pham, an Africa policy expert who worked in the first Trump administration, has said the Lobito project was likely to appeal to Mr. Trump.
In the final moments of perhaps his final round table with foreign leaders overseas, Mr. Biden appeared tired at times.
While some of the African leaders spoke in the hot room, the 82-year-old occasionally put his head down in his hand and closed his eyes before popping up to turn to his peers.
But he said his love for trains would bring him back to the continent in the future, even though he will no longer be president.
Mr. Biden recalled that when President Abraham Lincoln retired, he said he wanted to take a ride on the transcontinental railroad.
“I want to take a trip on this rail line, if I can,” Mr. Biden said.
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