In the coming decades, few regions will be as important to the world’s economy as Sub-Saharan Africa. Stretching from the deserts of the Sahel to the shores of the Cape it encompasses the majority of African countries.
The soil of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali holds an abundance of natural resources, including lithium, cobalt, gold, titanium and uranium – all critical to the production of next-generation batteries and the operation of small nuclear reactors that will decide the technological arms’ race in artificial intelligence.
This nearly unparalleled wealth in critical materials is the reason why Russia has been aggressively pushing into the region, using both private military companies such as the notorious Wagner Group and state-owned companies including the Russian nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, which is expanding its footprint across the continent by becoming a partner to multiple African governments in their drive for energy diversification.
In its quest for greater influence across the continent, Russia is steadily dislodging France, a traditional security partner of many African nations. Yet France’s loss in influence has also opened up worrying opportunities for Iran. Tehran is currently trying to purchase 1800 tons of uranium yellow cake from Niger that could significantly contribute to its nuclear program.
This confluence of macroeconomic and geopolitical factors has made Africa a vital national security interest of the United States and securing American leadership on the continent is an objective that in theory should enjoy broad bipartisan support across the aisle.
However, much like the botched retreat from Afghanistan, it was less in the intention and more in the strategic execution of this “pivot to Africa” that the Biden administration has been failing not only America but also our African friends and partners.
The current US government outlined a four-point strategic agenda for Sub-Saharan Africa in a paper published by the White House in August 2022. According to this document, America’s goal was to “foster openness and open societies,” “deliver democracy and security dividends,” “advance pandemic recovery and economic opportunity” and “support conservation, climate adaptation, and a just energy transition.”
Among these high-flying ambitions, it could charitably be argued that only the final two objectives have any chance of being more than worn-out neoconservative cliches and being meaningfully realized in the interest of both Africa and the United States. So far, the Biden administration shows zero tangible successes in its pivot to Africa and is unlikely to deliver any in its few remaining months in office.
A case in point for the failure of the US’s policy in Sub-Saharan Africa is Angola, where the Biden administration has been trying to reset relations with a government that, since winning its independence from its former colonial master Portugal in 1975, has been a staunch ally first of the Soviet Union and after its fall, Russia.
For almost half a century, the country’s ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a party with radical Marxist roots, has held an iron grip on the Angola population, using rigged elections and a whole gamut of egregious human rights abuses to stay in power.
Although Angola (like Venezuela) is rich in gas and oil reserves, corruption is widespread and a daily part of life for ordinary citizens. And while Angola’s president João Lourenço has signaled his intention to improve his country’s ties with the US and lessen Chinese and Russian influence, in August of this year, he signed several agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin solidifying Moscow’s presence in a range of strategic sectors of the Angolan economy, including gas and oil production, space and agriculture.
In Angola, one of the Biden administration’s instruments for achieving at least two of its strategic objectives, namely creating greater economic opportunities and supporting renewable energy production, has been the little-known Export-Import (“EXIM”) Bank of the United States, a federal export credit agency.
Founded in 1934, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, it was originally designed to boost trade with US businesses by providing preferential loans to foreign companies that would buy American products.
In pursuit of this mission, EXIM Bank gave billions of dollars in loans to countries around the world, including strategic adversaries, such as the Soviet Union and China, as well as governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America that were “democratic” only in name.
The results of this lavish disbursement of US government funds have been, to say the least, questionable and, it could be argued plausibly that they, in fact, often contributed to maintaining the stability and power of dictatorial regimes by providing them with economic assistance and compounding corruption.
In Angola, EXIM Bank has been trying to promote economic growth by granting two separate loans in June 2023 and July 2024, worth a combined US$2.5 billion to a Delaware-registered company called Sun Africa LLC.
EXIM Bank’s loans were intended to support the construction of solar energy plants in Angola, create over 4,700 US jobs, and help US exporters compete with Chinese suppliers.
While, at a superficial glance, this transaction appears in line with American economic interests, a closer inspection of the facts on the ground reveals yet another troubling set of circumstances that undermines any hope for a meaningful creation of jobs in the United States.
For a start, for the completion of its Angolan projects, Sun Africa is collaborating with local construction company Omatapalo, which is crony-linked to the Lourenço administration and the MPLA, raising significant concerns regarding potential corruption involving local authorities.
Hitachi Energy, a contractor that has worked extensively for Chinese state companies, is one of Sun Africa’s strategic partners in Angola, while according to a memorandum of understanding signed in December 2023, the controversial Lebanese company Dar Al-Handasah is going to supply technical assistance.
Finally, an article published in July of this year on the occasion of the appointment of Sun Africa’s new British head of export credit and structured finance stated that the company largely purchased its solar panels from South Korea and indicated that in the future it might also consider “very competitive” British suppliers.
It seems that Sun Africa has all the pieces in place to start its operations in Angola to the benefit of its shareholders and foreign partners. Where and how thousands of US jobs will ever be created in this scheme is an open question and anyone’s guess.
EXIM bank’s promotion of green energy in Angola is the perfect illustration of a consistent blundering foreign policy by the Biden administration, which, with negligible oversight, has failed to do basic due diligence on the recipients of large-scale US government funds.
It also appears to have failed to steer clear of the obvious risks of corruption arising in the case of Sun Africa’s government-linked partner, Omatapalo, which will likewise benefit from EXIM bank/US Taxpayer largesse.
While on a political level, the Biden Administration has failed to insist that Lourceno’s government perform a meaningful break with America’s adversaries, economically, it equally does not appear to have insisted on making sure that American and Angolan private businesses would be the main suppliers of Sun Africa’s US government-funded activities.
The case of EXIM Bank’s Angolan investment stands symptomically for the poor execution of the much-vaunted “pivot to Africa,” during which the US is being outsmarted by its adversaries and fooled by unrealistic policy objectives and untrustworthy local partners.
A radical reappraisal of America’s African strategy is in order. Let’s hope it happens sooner, rather than later with more competent leaders in charge.
Erik Prince is an American entrepreneur and security expert. He is a philanthropist and the founder of the Frontier Group of companies.
The US and its former colonial allies have a very long road back to earning the trust of the African people. They remember well that since the 1920s, the USSR and now Russia have been strong supporters of the people of the continent from their colonial masters and neo-colonialism. China, too, has earned the goodwill of the African people for the same reasons. The path forward for the US in Africa begins with shutting down the Africa Command, which leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the African people.
These minerals are not in the soil, but in rocks or regolith.