Osvaldo Mboco said he believes that the winner of the North American elections and next US head of state, Donald Trump, “will not discontinue what have been relations between Angola and the US on certain matters”, being aware that he could only change the form of approach.
“Clearly there will not be the same euphoria that (...) Joe Biden had, saying that Angola was the most important country now for America in Africa, but I think that we will still observe that several interests will be on the table” , Osvaldo Mboco told Lusa.
The international relations expert highlighted that the circumstances and context in which Trump returns to power are not the same as when he took office in 2017.
The academic argued that circumstances force North Americans to better consider their interests on the African continent.
“For a very simple reason. The West has suffered a political upheaval in the Sahel region, with coups d'état and unconstitutional changes, and we have been witnessing South Africa getting closer and closer to the BRIC [acronym that refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China, emerging countries in the world and the global south]”, he maintained.
According to Osvaldo Mboco, this paradigm shift “implies that the Americans must identify new ‘players’, new actors, at the level of the African continent to counterbalance the Chinese and Russian presence on the continent”.
“I think that due to Angola’s presence in Africa, its strategic geographical position, its political stability, (…) it is one of those eligible countries within this American strategy”, he stressed, highlighting the presence of the European and American consortium in the Lobito Corridor, to “to counterbalance or complicate what was the initial Chinese project regarding the [new] Silk Road [global infrastructure megaproject to connect China to other countries]”.
Also, the departure of North Americans from Niger, where they exploited strategic miners for their industry, led to the identification of new suppliers, “and one of them is without a shadow of a doubt the Democratic Republic of Congo”, he added.
“And the closest and cheapest corridor we have to the USA is the Lobito Corridor, which leads to the Atlantic. Observing all these elements, I believe that President Trump will not discontinue "what have been" relations between Angola and the USA on certain matters”, he stressed.
The fellow university professor emphasized that Joe Biden is President of the US until January, so his visit “still has weight”.
“Clearly, from the point of view of guarantees, from the point of view of assuming certain commitments, there is also a certain caution here - that the next person may, to a certain extent, discontinue -, but I think that the agreements that will be signed are from the American interest, (...) and we are unlikely to see discontinuity, it still has this weight and relevance”, he observed.
