Courtesy of The Africa Report, a report on Angola’s stated tendency to ditch Russia for US as Lourenço eyes third term:

From arms sales to green energy to direct flights, Luanda is forging ahead with ever-deepening ties with Washington even as other countries in southern Africa look to preserve their Cold War-era ties to Moscow while playing all sides. With the oil-rich nation celebrating 30 years of relations with the US this year, the Angolan leader is looking to score a domestic political win through a White House meeting with his American counterpart.

“We are informed that if President Lourenço is unable to meet with President Joe Biden this year, there is a real risk that the positive momentum both sides have generated since 2017 will begin to lose traction,” US lobby firm Squire Patton Boggs wrote in a 4 April email to Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee.

“The Angolans are not prepared to say this to the US government,” firm partner Robert Kapla added. “But in an environment in which Angola’s peers in sub-Saharan Africa are hedging their relationships with the US, President Lourenço faces increasing pressure to do the same.”

Washington is sending strong messages that it’s also ready to take the relationship to the next level.

Diplomatic relations

“Today — as we celebrate 30 years of diplomatic relations between the US and Angola — we reflect on the shared values that bind our partnership,” Biden said in a 19 May statement. “And together, we renew our commitment to achieving our shared vision for the world—one that is more peaceful, secure, and democratic for all.”

“I look forward to deepening the partnership between our nations — and friendship between our people — as we forge a better future,” the US president added.

Angola has long struggled to unleash an economy held back by falling oil prices and a reputation for corruption cemented during the 38-year reign of former President José Eduardo dos Santos.

In power since late 2017, Lourenço has advocated ever tighter ties to the US, earning praise for his anti-graft efforts from then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he visited Luanda in 2020. The courtship reached a new level in December when Lourenço told Voice of America that he wanted to replace his country’s Russian arms with American ones.

“We, the government of Angola, would like to invite the US to participate in our military equipment programme,” the Angola president said.

Arms market

“The time has come to move to rearm the FAA with NATO equipment,” he added, “and we consider the US the ideal way to achieve this transition.”

Angola is the fourth-biggest market for Russian arms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, behind only Algeria, Egypt and Sudan. As recently as 2019, Lourenço was planning to build factories to manufacture Russian weapons.

For the US, the turn-around is another sign that its international campaign against Russia’s weapons sector is bearing fruit.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “disrupted global defence trade and upended existing security arrangements,” Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Jessica Lewis said in a speech earlier this year. Confronted with the embarrassing battlefield failures of a Russian arms industry choked off from raw materials by sanctions, Moscow’s clients feel at risk and are looking to diversify.

Moscow hasn’t thrown in the towel, however. Luanda was on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s tour of the region earlier this year.

The China challenge

Russia isn’t the only country competing with the US for Angola’s attention.

Luanda’s lobbyists in Washington are pushing a resolution on Capitol Hill that calls for deeper ties by highlighting the Lourenço administration’s decreasing reliance on Beijing, including falling debt owed to China that peaked at $43bn in 2016.

“The US should cultivate its relationship with Angola with renewed urgency as China tries to strategically integrate itself in Angola’s development plans in the service of its own geopolitical priorities,” the resolution states.

The lobbying push has focused heavily on Amos Hochstein, Biden’s Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security. In a 24 May email, Squire Patton Boggs’ Kapla thanked Hochstein for his “important role” in the 2023 G7 meeting in Hiroshima in May, where Biden highlighted several pending projects in Angola under the G7’s new global infrastructure scheme, including:

$900m from the US Export-Import Bank for two solar projects generating 400MW of power in Malanje province and 104MW in Luanda province
$250m in funding from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to develop the Lobito Atlantic Railway Corridor between Angola’s Lobito Port and the Congolese border

Investments in digital infrastructure from multiple agencies to “provide fast and reliable internet to individuals and companies across the Lobito Corridor and expand access to mobile money services in rural areas.”

Taking flight

Kapla also drew attention to current concession areas across Angola for mining explorations of various critical minerals including rare earth, lithium, cobalt and zinc.

“There’s a world of potential in the country for these assets,” Kapla wrote to Hochstein. “Importantly, they are not being given to the Chinese for the time being as the president’s instructions are to develop them into proven reserves with public funding and then decide on a path forward.”

In an environment in which Angola’s peers in sub-Saharan Africa are hedging their relationships with the US, President Lourenço faces increasing pressure to do the same.

In another sign of warming bilateral ties, the US and Angola signed a preliminary Air Transport Agreement on 26 April in order to “open new opportunities for expanded air transportation services, benefiting travellers, airlines, and shippers.” The US has been without a direct flight to Angola ever since falling energy prices precipitated the demise back in 2018 of the famed “Houston Express”, a one-of-a-kind service that had carried oil executives on a chartered Boeing 747 for the 14-hour, 8,000-mile flight three times a week since 2000.

Angola is also keen to draw attention to its rising diplomatic clout, notably in the eastern Congo, where Lourenço deployed 500 troops in March after a cease-fire between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group collapsed. The conflict is expected to be a major focus of External Relations Minister Tete Antonio’s visit to Washington during the week of 12 June.

Proceed with caution

Not everyone is ecstatic about the warming ties, however.

Florindo Chivucute of the Friends of Angola – a nonprofit in Washington, DC that helped drive US sanctions against ex-officials including former first daughter Isabel Dos Santos – argues that Lourenço’s vaunted anti-corruption drive is very selective, targeting the president’s political enemies while graft lingers in the public contracting sector. He also worries about the closing of civic space, notably with pending rules targeting non-governmental organisations.

Behind Lourenço’s entreaties to the US, Chivucute insists, is a deliberate effort to nurture powerful friends so he can limit international opposition to a potentially controversial change to the constitution so he can run for a third term in 2027. Lourenço recently told France 24 that he did not rule out a third term, infuriating the opposition.

“The end goal is looking for some support, boosters, so that once it comes time for him to change the constitution … the backlash will not be so strong,” Chivucute tells The Africa Report.

Washington, he says, failed to enact sanctions in 2022 despite evidence of electoral fraud. If it embraces Lourenço without reserve now, it risks undermining Biden’s stated support for democracy on the continent.

“These mixed messages are no good if you really want to strengthen democracy, not just at home but abroad as well,” Chivucute says. “And the winners are [countries] like China and Russia, because of the mixed messages […]. You know, what the Russians want, you know what the Chinese want, but the US is so confusing.”