Editor’s note: The views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views of AidData.
With the transition to President Donald Trump’s administration in January 2025 and his executive orders enforcing stop-work orders on nearly all international assistance funding, the future of the Lobito Corridor—a 1,300-km railway spanning the mineral-rich regions of the DRC and Zambia—has come under scrutiny. While there is speculation that the project aligns with President Trump’s emphasis on countering China’s influence, his administration's focus on domestic priorities and skepticism toward foreign aid could impact sustained funding. Though there are positive signs for a way forward: according to the Financial Times, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation remains engaged in the Lobito Corridor and is scheduled to disburse a part of its loan funding the project later this month.
The investments the U.S. has made in the Lobito Corridor over the last five years underscore Angola’s deepening economic ties with the West. Contrary to mostly bilateral Chinese lending practices, the U.S. has instead opted for a “strategic , values-driven, high standard infrastructure investment” in the Lobito Corridor as part of its Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), in conjunction with other G7 nations. The U.S. has spent or pledged nearly $4 billion in funding to support the development of the Lobito Corridor, including a $560 million pledge from President Biden on his final overseas visit before leaving office. In December 2024, President Biden traveled to the Angolan seaport of Lobito during a state visit to the oil-rich sub-Saharan African nation, part of the Biden Administration’s strategy to “accelerate high-level exchanges” with Africa—a sentiment that the Trump Administration is likely to walk back on, unless there is a direct link between African development and American national security interests or countering Chinese influence.
Recent reports on a potential minerals-for-security deal between the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have thrust the Lobito Corridor project further into the limelight in the critical minerals race between the United States and China. Lobito, a municipality in Angola, is slated to be the terminus of a 1,300-km railway corridor of the same name that spans the DRC and Zambia. The corridor will primarily carry critical minerals like cobalt, lithium, and copper from the town of Kolwezi in the DRC, site of some of the largest deposits in the world, to the port of Lobito in Angola. Lobito Port is envisioned as a future transit hub for shipment of these minerals to the U.S., the EU and other G-7 countries for use primarily in the clean energy sector. In August 2024, the first shipment of copper bound for the U.S. left the Lobito port in Angola, with the copper cathodes having been transported from Kolwezi in the DRC via the Lobito Atlantic Railway.
While the U.S. ramped up its involvement in Angola under the Biden administration, China has been a long-time development finance partner for the country. Angola marked a major infrastructure milestone with the launch of the Chinese-built Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport, the Luanda Airport for short, last November. Designed to handle 15 million passengers and 600,000 tons of cargo annually, it is the largest Chinese-financed airport outside China and a key part of China’s “Air Silk Road” strategy. These two projects—the critical minerals-focused Lobito Corridor and the Air Silk Road-focused Luanda Airport—illustrate the intensifying U.S.-China competition for influence in Africa through infrastructure and critical minerals. Both powers seek to secure critical resources like cobalt and lithium for clean energy, leveraging massive rail- and air-based transport corridors to solidify economic and strategic partnerships.
A new Chinese-funded airport opens in Luanda
Since the end of Angola’s civil war in 2002, China and Angola have forged a deeply interdependent economic relationship, driven primarily by Angola’s significant oil reserves and China’s growing energy demands. Since the 2000s, China has extended substantial loans to Angola, which have largely been repaid through oil exports—a framework commonly referred to as the “Angolan model.” This arrangement has solidified Angola’s role as one of China’s top crude oil suppliers, highlighting its strategic importance within China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Additionally, Angola is the biggest African recipient of Chinese development finance, with China having committed $68.64 billion through significant investments in various projects in Angola from 2000-2021. The Luanda Airport, constructed through a $1.29 billion Chinese loan to Angola, is the largest Chinese-constructed airport in the world outside of China and is expected to be a major aviation hub in China’s Air Silk Road strategy, rivaling Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport.
In preparation for the next major update to AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset and our upcoming Loan Performance Dataset, AidData has carefully documented the ways in which the Luanda Airport project has been designed, financed, and implemented. While the $1.29 billion loan for the airport is the largest in the transport sector given by a Chinese lender to Angola, Chinese lenders provided a total of $9.40 billion in loans to Angola’s transport sector between 2000 and 2021.
The Luanda Airport project involved constructing and equipping the New Angola International Airport, which is designed to be an alternative to the existing Quatro de Fevereiro Airport. A consortium of Chinese contractors led by the China National Aero-technology International Engineering Corporation (AVIC-ENG) was awarded the contract for this project in 2005, under the management of the controversial China International Fund (CIF)—a Hong Kong-based consortium led by Sam Pa which has faced criticism in Angola for delays and incomplete work on large-scale infrastructure projects, including the Benguela railway reconstruction. A $450 million loan from CIF in 2005 for the Luanda Airport, initially expected to open in 2015-2016, remained undisbursed, leading to no construction as of 2008 at the airport site and minimal evidence of project implementation by 2010-2011. These repeated delays and funding challenges added to CIF’s notoriety for struggling to complete large-scale projects.
This resulted in the Government of Angola signing a $1.29 billion syndicated buyer’s credit loan agreement with two major Chinese banks, ICBC and China CITIC Bank, to fund the project in May 2018. The loan, which covers 85% of the $1.51 billion project cost, has a 6% interest rate and a 15-year repayment period, with an 18-month grace period during which no payments are required. The loan was followed by CIF’s contract being cancelled due to nonperformance in February 2019, after which AVIC-ENG was awarded the sole contract for managing the project.
Additionally, Sinosure, a Chinese credit insurance company, provided coverage to protect the Chinese banks involved against potential repayment risks. A syndicated loan involves multiple banks collaborating to provide funds to a single borrower. In this case, ICBC and China CITIC Bank partnered to supply the financing, sharing the financial risk associated with such a large loan. This arrangement minimizes individual exposure for each bank, while granting Angola access to significant resources for the project. By receiving the loan directly, Angola's government assumed full responsibility for managing the funds and ensuring timely repayment. While Sinosure’s insurance protects the lenders from potential losses, it does not relieve Angola of its repayment obligations. The involvement of Sinosure probably reflects caution on the lenders’ part, reflecting concerns about Angola’s capacity to meet its financial commitments, given its already high debt exposure and challenging economic situation.
Work finally resumed on the project in 2021, and the airport conducted its first test flight in 2022. Angolan President Joao Lourenço inaugurated cargo operations on November 10, 2023, and a year later, the airport launched passenger services with a symbolic first flight to the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, situated near major oil fields that form nearly 95% of Angola’s exports.
Lobito: America’s answer to Chinese-financed infrastructure?
China’s approach to financing and insuring the Luanda Airport project typifies its bilateral approach for managing risks and maximizing returns from large commercial infrastructure projects in Angola. But a little over 400km away from the Luanda Airport is another major project, which may serve as the U.S.’s answer to Chinese-financed infrastructure in Angola: the Lobito Atlantic Railway. Spanning over 800 miles, the railway significantly reduces transportation times from the copper and cobalt mining regions of Congo. Strategically located on the Atlantic Ocean, the port of Lobito offers a shorter route to the U.S. and Europe compared to the more commonly used Indian Ocean ports like Mombasa, Maputo, and Durban. The railway is also planned to extend into Zambia, another country rich in copper resources. It is the West’s gateway to the DRC, the second-largest global producer of copper, and a country where China has long had stronghold on the mining sector, as exemplified by China’s control of 74% of global cobalt output, an essential material for electric vehicle batteries and jet engines.
The Lobito Corridor’s rail infrastructure originated from the Benguela Railway, initiated in 1902 and completed in 1931 by Sir Robert Williams to connect Zambia and the DRC’s mining operations to Angola’s Atlantic coast. However, Angola’s civil war (1975–2002) devastated railway operations, leaving only 34 km of the railway line operational.
Despite completing one rehabilitation project on the railway from 2006 to 2014, in 2022, Angola rejected a Chinese bid to manage the railway, awarding a 30-year concession instead to the U.S.-backed Lobito Atlantic Railway Company, a European consortium that pledged $555 million in regional investment. During his December 2024 visit, President Biden announced more than $560 million in new funding for the Lobito Corridor, which included at least $200 million in private sector investments for co-located infrastructure projects. This brings total U.S. investments in the Lobito Corridor to over $4 billion, a figure that includes mobilization of another $500 million by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) for the Zambia-Lobito Rail Project, $700 million in critical health infrastructure, $458 million in the agriculture and food processing sectors, $100 million to promote digital access, and $8.6 million for the U.S-Angola critical minerals partnership, among other investments. If contributions from G7 partners and regional development banks are included, international investments in the Lobito Corridor under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) now surpass $6 billion.
What will Angola choose: American “pivot” or Chinese consistency?
The Luanda Airport and the Lobito Corridor and Port are just two examples of projects that are increasingly evident of direct competition between the U.S. and China in sub-Saharan Africa. The largest American and Chinese investments outside of the United States and China respectively, the Lobito Corridor and Luanda Airport are being framed by both countries in a broader context. China Today, a Chinese state-owned media outlet, envisioned the airport as one of the major air transport hubs in Africa, making Angola “a powerhouse for regional trade and investment.” On the American side, when meeting President Lourenço of Angola during a state visit to the nation in December 2024, President Joe Biden stated that the United States is “all in on Africa.” While there is evidence that strategic projects like the Lobito Corridor may continue to be supported, under the new administration in Washington, the United States’ broader commitment to Africa remains an open question.
Amid 21st-century U.S.-China competition in Africa, Angola is emerging as a strategic player, leveraging its negotiating power to secure concessions on Chinese debt while attracting investments from both powers. By balancing these relationships, President João Lourenço’s government has tried to reduce reliance on Beijing without jeopardizing Angola’s oil sector. Calling the rivalry a “non-issue” in a recent New York Times interview, Angola has skillfully managed its position to advance development while maintaining autonomy. This approach highlights how some African nations are adapting to great-power competition, using it to their advantage in debt negotiations and infrastructure development.
In a visit perceived by some as marking Angola’s “American pivot,” President Lourenço travelled to Washington, D.C. in November 2023 to meet with President Biden and other senior U.S. officials. The visit seemed to be a part of a careful balancing act, primarily attributed to Lourenço’s anti-corruption reforms, and a recent acknowledgment of the extent of Angola’s debt to China. As a part of this strategy, Lourenço has worked to reduce this dependence, especially on oil-backed Chinese loans, and distance his administration from the legacy of his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos.
However, under President Trump’s “America First” mantra, Angola may have to reconsider how it balances Chinese and U.S. engagement. In this evolving geopolitical landscape, the broader extent to which the U.S. remains a committed partner is uncertain—unless American interests are directly at stake, such as in the Lobito Corridor. As Angola continues to secure major infrastructure projects like the Lobito Corridor and the Luanda Airport, its growing prominence in U.S.-China competition underscores the challenge faced by many African nations: navigating a world where strategic partnerships are increasingly transactional. With U.S. priorities shifting, Angola and others in the region may find themselves turning back to China as a more consistent and willing development partner, reinforcing the idea that maximizing agency in a realpolitik-inclined international order requires pragmatism above all.
The data in this article is drawn from the 3.0 version of AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset, which can be accessed via china.aiddata.org, as well as additional data collection for financial commitments in 2022. All financial commitments captured by AidData are denominated in constant 2021 USD.
