Biden Is First US President to Visit Angola

Speaking of "our nation's original sin," President Biden toured a slavery museum in Angola on Tuesday and inspected shackles and a whip, He also addressed Africa's future, saying Africans will make up one in four people by 2050 and the world's fate rests in their hands.

• Biden's visit, the first to Angola by a US president, is meant to promote billions of dollars of commitments to the sub-Saharan African nation for what he called the largest ever US rail investment overseas, the AP reports. "The United States is all in on Africa," Biden told Angolan President João Lourenço, who called Biden's visit a key turning point in US-Angola relations dating back to the Cold War.
• Biden and Lourenco briefly addressed reporters before a closed-door meeting. Biden ignored questions about his decision to issue a pardon for his son after previously pledging not to, and joked to the Angolan delegation, "Welcome to America." He also told Lourenco, while pledging to use the trip to listen: "We don't think, because we're bigger and more powerful, that we're smarter. We don't think we have all the answers."

• The US for years has built relations in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. The 800-mile Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment linking Zambia, Congo, and Angola is different, with shades of China's Belt and Road infrastructure strategy in Africa and other parts of the world. Biden will visit the coastal city of Lobito on Wednesday for a look at the corridor's Atlantic Ocean outlet.
• White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the corridor's completion is "going to take years." That means much of it may fall to Donald Trump , who takes office on Jan. 20. Asked whether the project could proceed without Trump's support, Kirby said the Biden administration hopes "that they see the value too." Kirby also insisted that the corridor was about more than simply trying to outpace Beijing, saying that "we're not asking countries to choose between us and Russia and China."

• But even as the trip was meant to counter China's influence on the African continent, Beijing announced its own move. The corridor across southern Africa is meant to make it easier to ship raw materials for export and advance the US presence in a region rich in critical minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices, and clean energy technologies. China already has heavy investments in mining and processing African minerals, and on Tuesday it announced it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony, and other high-tech materials. It came a day after the US expanded its list of Chinese technology companies subject to controls.

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