(AFP) - Joe Biden's choice of Angola as his first trip to Africa as president underscores the influence of the oil-rich country as the focus of one of the biggest US infrastructure projects on the continent in a counterpoint to China's investments.

Biden's October 13-15 visit, which comes just months before his term ends, will centre on a massive multinational project to rehabilitate a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) railway that will connect mineral-rich inland countries with Angola's Atlantic seaport of Lobito.

The Lobito Corridor will transport resources critical to the global economy, including copper and cobalt, from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia to the port for export.

The project is a piece in the geopolitical battle between the United States and its allies and China, which owns mines in the DRC and Zambia among an array of investments in the region.

Biden called it "the biggest US rail investment in Africa ever" when he met Angolan President Joao Lourenco at the White House in December.

"For Washington, Angola is an example of an African state that has become less ideological and that is actively diversifying its relations from being overly exposed to China and to a lesser extent Russia," Chatham House Africa programme director Alex Vines said.

- Emerging power -

"Washington also sees Angola as an emerging, middle power in Africa," he told AFP.

The Portuguese-speaking nation of 37 million people is Africa's second-largest crude oil exporter, according to 2022 figures from the International Energy Agency, with the oil industry making up about 90 percent of its exports.

The eighth-largest economy in Africa in terms of GDP, according to IMF estimates, its people are poor and jobless. The youth unemployment rate stood at 58 percent in 2023, the World Bank says.

"Angola is diversifying its international partnerships but also needs to increase FDI (foreign direct investment)," Vines said. "Growing US investment in Angola is important for Luanda as part of this strategy."

The country was devastated by a 27-year civil war that started immediately on independence from Portugal in 1975, when the UNITA rebel movement challenged the ruling MPLA that is still in power today.

The United States recognised the Angolan government in 1993, becoming an importer of its oil.

Since Lourenco's election as president in 2017, US-Angola relations have warmed significantly, Vines said. It is a turnaround from the Cold War years when Washington funnelled covert aid to UNITA.

Angola's growing assertiveness is also shown in its mediation to end the conflict in the eastern DRC region of North Kivu, where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have been fighting government forces since late 2021.

Talks in Luanda in late 2022 reached an agreement for a drawback of the M23, with a ceasefire announced in July 2024, which Kinshasa says has generally been respected.

- Counterbalance to China -

Peace and security as well as strengthening democracy would also be discussed during Biden's visit, the White House said.

Rights groups and opposition activists have accused Angola's authorities of growing repression, including with new laws that would restrict media and clamp down on protests.

But the focus is the railway project, which Washington has said could even be extended across the continent to the Indian Ocean.

Beijing, meanwhile, agreed at a China-Africa summit in September to rehabilitate a separate railway line from inland mining countries to the Indian Ocean on the TAZARA route from Zambia to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Cesaltina Abreu, a sociologist at Catholic University in Luanda, cautioned that the United States "does not have friends, just interests".

"The US also wants to counterbalance the growing China influence in Africa, specifically in southern Africa. But there's not any guarantee that the Lobito Corridor project will promote sustainable and inclusive development for local people," she said.

"We need to establish balanced relations with all superpowers and powers both on political and economic grounds," said Heitor Carvalho, researcher at Lusiada University.

© Agence France-Presse