Africa steps into the global political and economic spotlight

Africa often flies under the global radar, despite its growing economic and political significance. However, that will change in the coming week, with South Africa assuming the G20 presidency on Sunday, and US President Joe Biden visiting Angola from Monday to Wednesday, probably his last overseas trip as president.
Both moments are big firsts. No African nation has ever held the G20 before. Moreover, Biden’s trip is not only the first US presidential visit to Angola, but also his first to the continent during his own presidency, as he seeks to highlight to his successor, Donald Trump, and the wider West the strategic importance of Africa in the second half of the decade.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that he will use South Africa’s G20 year, which will include 130 meetings in the next 12 months, to put the spotlight on the huge political and economic potential of the continent. Indeed, Africa is increasingly seen to have the potential to become the main driver of global growth.
At a time of global demographic aging, the share of Africa’s population aged 65 or over has remained at barely 3 percent over recent decades. It has, therefore, earned the nickname of the “young continent,” with almost two-thirds of its population under the age of 30, and 40 percent under 14. Overall, Africa’s population is forecast to double by 2050, to 2.8 billion, with a huge consumer market that is increasing demand for global goods and services.
Biden, who on Monday will become the first US president to visit sub-Saharan Africa since 2015, will bring attention to this continental growth story in the context of US policy. At present, Africa accounts for just over 1 percent of US foreign trade, which is dominated by petroleum imports from Nigeria and Angola. So Biden has said that he “is all in on Africa” and, in 2022, he hosted the African Leaders Summit in Washington, the first such meeting for eight years since Barack Obama’s presidency.
This contrasts with Trump’s first presidency from 2017-21, when US policy toward Africa had lower priority — and this despite key administration figures, including former national security adviser John Bolton, acknowledging that Russia and China were “interfering with US military operations and posed a significant threat to US national security interests” there.
One of Biden’s early presidential initiatives was the launch of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment at the G7 summit in Germany in 2022. A key goal is to narrow the investment gap for quality infrastructure, providing an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Biden’s choice of natural resources-rich Angola, Africa’s eighth largest economy, is deliberate. At the G7 summit in Japan in 2023, the US leader announced — in partnership with the EU — the Lobito Corridor initiative as part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment to revamp the 1,300 km transport route connecting the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia with global markets through the port of Lobito.

Biden’s trip will focus on the huge potential of Africa, which has global importance for Washington.

Andrew Hammond

This is a potential breakthrough infrastructure venture between the West, African governments, and African financial institutions. If the project bears fruit, it may be a partnership blueprint for similar joint initiatives.
Lobito’s rival is an existing China route, transporting minerals, such as copper and cobalt, from Zambia and DRC — the so-called Tazara railway, a line from inland mining countries to the Indian Ocean. Earlier this year, China’s President Xi Jinping signed off on a $1 billion plan to rehabilitate the project, which connects Zambia’s copper belt region to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.
The US first recognized the Angolan government in 1993. However, it was not until 2017 that bilateral relations began to warm significantly with Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco’s election as president. The nation of 40 million people is Africa’s second largest crude oil exporter, with the oil industry making up about 90 percent of its exports.
Crucially for the US, Angola is diversifying its dependence on China. For decades, Angolan reliance on Chinese loans grew after it emerged from the civil war in 2002. The country still owes China around $17 billion, mostly in the form of oil-backed loans, which funded infrastructure such as roads and public housing.
The still significant economic dependence of Angola on China is a familiar story in Africa. From 2000-2023, China lent Africa more than $180 billion, making Beijing the top bilateral lender for multiple nations on the continent. Around a quarter of that has been for 270 loans to Angola for mostly energy and transportation projects, with Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya the top five borrowers. This $180 billion sum is the equivalent of over 60 percent of the World Bank’s lending, and around five times the total of African Development Bank’s sovereign loans.
The broader context is that, in 2009, China surpassed the US as Africa’s biggest trading partner, with trade volumes recording a record high of $282 billion in 2023, a huge increase from $12 billion a quarter of a century ago. Around a fifth of Africa’s exports now go to China, a quadrupling in US dollar terms since 2001, the bulk of which includes metals, mineral products, and fuel.
Taken together, Biden’s trip will focus on the huge potential of Africa, which has global importance for Washington and the wider West. However, with US policy seeking to catch up with China in the continent, regional allies rightly worry that Trump’s second presidency could see Africa’s perceived importance diminished again in the White House.

• Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.