How Chinese Development Loans ‘Captured’ Angola
By Douglas Burton *
For years The Republic of Angola has been called Africa’s “richest poor country,” chock full of oil and diamonds, but wasted by 40 years of proxy wars and looted by native kleptocrats.
After a bloody civil war ended in 2002, the government looked for international investors, and in two years bankers from the Chinese regime arrived in Luanda with the message, “We’re from Beijing, and we’re here to help.”
Yet, nearly 20 years of Chinese state-backed projects later, Angola is on the hook for $21 billion owed to China despite the fact that Angola has negative growth, and more than 50 percent of its population is desperately poor.
That’s the case presented by a panel of subject experts assessing Angola’s predicament at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Feb. 7.
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