When I visited Luanda in 2018, the country was still trying to figure out how to rebuild its economy after years of kleptocracy from the Santos regime. The new generation of leaders that had grown up in the aftermath of a brutal Civil War did not quite know which international partners to trust. The personal stories of Angolans who had endured the “resource curse” were heart-wrenching. Despite having legion reserves of diamonds, oil and critical metals, a generation of children had not been vaccinated against polio and suffered debilitating disabilities. I was in the country to recruit a doctoral student, Jandira Morais, who had endured this fate as a polio survivor but still managed to pursue higher studies in South Africa. Her interest in research was to see how to help the poorest in Luanda, the waste pickers in the garbage dumps achieve more sustainable livelihoods.
As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wraps up his historic visit to Angola touting American assistance for the “Lobito Corridor” that will bring mineral wealth from the region to Angola’s Atlantic coast, he should also keep an eye on the waste pickers. A stark lesson of donor investment in Africa has been that if the development dollars don’t trickle down to those most in need, there will be coups, revolutions and alliances will shift. Even with environmental investments need to be considered with trepidation so as to prevent “Greenwashing of Development,” as was recently cautioned in an opinion piece for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The United States should certainly pay more attention Africa and democracies like Angola deserve priority. However, there needs to be a transparent and enduring commitment to development that should also outlast specific political disagreements. Some level of quid pro quo is inevitable with the level of power differentials at stake. However, we need to be particularly careful about using minerals as the key driver for the relationship given the sensitivity that Africans have about the instrumental use of natural resources for colonialism.
Many of the recent coups in Francophone Africa have been linked to perceptions of opportunism over mineral rents that the West has used to its advantage. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a particularly confounding example in this regard and has become the archetype for governance failures despite mineral wealth. Angola is especially concerned about the spillover of conflict from the “Heart of Africa” to its environs and has also sent troops there within the past year. Angola also has the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda (which has its own long history of civil conflict) that borders both the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville as capital and former French colony) and the DRC (Kinshasa as capital and former Belgian colony).
The Mineral Axis that the United States is developing with Angola will need to be sensitive to the complexity of this is region and work with African institutions to ensure its legitimacy. The African School of Economics, established by Beninese scholar and Princeton Professor Leonard Wantchekon could be one such partner alongside political institutions such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or even the African Union. There should also be a willingness for both China and the United States to consider collaborative opportunities around industrial development in Africa and countries should not be forced to choose in a zero-sum game. Natural resources are geologically determined and Angola’s good fortune of having a handsome share of mineral wealth in the region should first and foremost benefit its citizens across all strata of society. As Jandira finishes her doctorate this year and considers a return to her homeland she should not have to worry about malevolent manipulation of her country’s mineral wealth.
