{{The Obama administration is pushing to boost U.S. investment in Angola as it moves forward with a continent-wide initiative to increase access to electricity}}
jbdodane Angola citycentreAn initiative has been rolled out across Africa to increase access to electricity.
U.S. secretary of state John Kerry led the drive on a visit to Luanda that included a tour of General Electric oil services facilities at the capital’s port.
“We’re standing in a place of enormous economic activity with great promise for future economic growth and development,” Kerry said.
“When I look out at the economic energy out here in the port in all these containers and these ships and the work that you’re doing, I am confident that Angola, working together as you are now, will be able to help contribute to an extraordinary journey in Africa as a whole, and we will provide greater opportunity to everybody.”
Angolan foreign minister Georges Chikoti said he and secretary Kerry focused on the “positive growth” of U.S.-Angolan diplomatic and commercial ties.
“We touched on not only petroleum but other credits such as the recent $600mn credit given by the Exim bank so that we could buy more Boeing planes, and we look forward to greater economic relations and other relations in the future.”
That credit is part of more aggressive U.S. funding for Africa that has grown from six per cent of the portfolio of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to 25 per cent, now topping US$4bn.
“We’re working with everything from really big companies like General Electric, who are investing in everything from wind to biomass to medical facilities, all the way down to individual diaspora investors who are investing in one-room school buildings,” stated OPIC CEO Elizabeth Littlefield.
With the number of African households with disposable income expected to double over the next ten years, she says the continent is “reaching that tipping point when people stop paying just for subsistence and start buying cell phones and televisions and refrigerators.”
“You have more Africans getting educated in the US now and coming home rather than staying in the U.S.,” Littlefield said, “an incredible number of super-dynamic young people equipped with hard, real-world skills educated abroad, coming back to try their hand at making money on the continent.”
With total U.S.-Angola trade last year topping US$10bn, assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa Florie Liser stated Luanda is one of Washington’s most important sub-Saharan partners.
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