José Semedo
Africa-Press – Angola. During the last weeks of 2024, all sorts of supporters of President João Lourenço celebrated the announcement that their great political idol, Joe Biden, would come to Angola as a great diplomatic triumph. JLo’s low public approval rating was now compensated by his unofficial title of “diplomatic genius”.
The president who has a solution for everything and for all countries could now boast his title of “great diplomat”, who managed to get the president of the most powerful country in the world to come to Angola. The problem is that the general ignored his critics, who predicted the outcome of the agreements signed with Joe Biden in 2024.
The unofficial Angolan press published a series of articles that presented a series of problems related to the Lobito Corridor, especially after Joe Biden gave up his re-election, when his “weak” state of health became evident.
South African journalist Redi Thlabi, in an interview with Deutsche Welle (DW), said that Angola was probably influenced by the fact that the United States is still the world’s largest economy and the most powerful country militarily, offering the Corridor in exchange for humanitarian aid and other types of assistance that could help stabilize the MPLA regime.
However, those who designed Angola’s current foreign policy do not bear in mind that today countries in the Global South prefer to do business with other developing countries, as the US has its own agenda and it can change abruptly with the change of president.
The US had a president who offered humanitarian aid to African countries in exchange for their presence and now a president who openly refers to African countries as “shit holes”, as was published in the unofficial Angolan press. A lot of public resources were spent to make a spectacle of Joe Biden’s visit, resources that could have been used to solve more urgent, concrete problems that depend on Angola, and not on the US, China or the Galactic Empire – the water issue!
Today, Angola is experiencing an economic and health crisis. Many Angolans are dying of cholera due to the lack of drinking water! Why not call the leaders of Austria to resolve basic issues such as water, instead of a media spectacle around a president?! The Angolan people welcomed JLo to a stadium shouting “Hunger!” and it seems they will do the same shouting “Thirst!”, because in a country full of resources, the people do not have drinking water, which is now a luxury commodity traded by speculators.
Considering the inauguration of the new president Donald Trump in the United States of America, it is clear that the resources spent by JLo to receive the former president were useless and could have been better used in Angola.
The new American president has cancelled a series of agreements signed by Joe Biden and now has another agenda, other priorities, exactly as predicted by more than one Angolan journalist. But unfortunately, the fact is that instead of listening to his own people and maintaining a dialogic relationship with journalists, João Lourenço and the Angolan authorities prefer to treat them with a criminal procedural relationship.
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