Luanda, June 25, 2025 (Lusa) - Angola’s Minister of State for Economic Coordination on Wednesday highlighted the “unique” moment and the agreements signed during the US-Africa business summit, which he said served to raise the profile of African countries.
José de Lima Massano was speaking to the press at the end of the closing ceremony of the 17th United States-Africa Business Summit, co-organised by the Angolan Government and the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), which took place in Luanda over three days.
The summit, which was attended by more than 1,500 participants, including heads of state, ministers and business leaders, welcomed 490 Angolan companies, 202 African companies and 73 American companies, and saw the signing of nine legal instruments in various sectors.
According to José de Lima Massano, the participation of people from all over the world, but particularly from the African continent, demonstrated Angola’s capacity for mobilisation and organisation.
The Angolan minister stressed that many agreements had been signed, but “more than these agreements, it is above all the visibility given to countries, particularly Angola”, in terms of “opportunities, challenges” and the African will “to transform, to make things happen”.
The summit, he said, was “a unique moment”, as well as “everything else that will happen in the near future, based on what has been possible to demonstrate as the potential of a nation”.
Regarding the Lobito Corridor, a strategic railway infrastructure linking the Port of Lobito in Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) via Zambia to facilitate the transport of minerals and goods, José de Lima Massano welcomed the results achieved so far, and now hopes for good private projects to attract the financial resources made available.
“The Corridor is here, o what we need now are quality projects that can capture the financial resources that are being made available, because these are not resources to finance public investments, they are essentially resources to support private initiatives,” he stressed.
José de Lima Massano stressed the existence of a master plan for the Lobito Corridor, where logistics and agricultural production zones are to be set up, but private initiatives are needed, capitalising on the resources that Angola “fortunately” continues to receive from the US, the European Union and many African multilateral institutions.
During the summit, an agreement was signed between the Angola Sovereign Fund and Israeli businessman Haim Taib to launch an independent platform to accelerate investment in sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, health, industry, education and digital inclusion, which aims to mobilise US$1 billion for the Lobito Corridor, with an initial investment of US$100 million.
African countries are not in a position to continue to take on debt in the way it is done today, continued José de Lima Massano, emphasising that there are limitations.
“More debt could lead us to a point where our ability to service that debt begins to be questioned, but the needs are there, infrastructure has to continue to be developed, so we need to bring in the private sector,” he argued.
One of the challenges, said the Angolan minister, remains attracting private capital for infrastructure construction, leaving the state free of debt.
“This is the challenge we face and it will lead us, even from a legal point of view, to carry out reforms, as happened recently with the energy sector, where transmission, for example, is a service that can now be provided by the private sector, but there is the challenge of price, for example,” he pointed out.
“If we have a price below the market, it will be difficult to attract this investment, so we have to find a balance where the service is available, accessible and capital is employed but also profitable. These are the balances that our countries have to find and the path that Angola also intends to follow,” he emphasised.
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