10 August 2009

Agriculture and Energy Key to Clinton Angola Visit on Africa Trip

USAID, Chevron partner on economic diversification project

A village chief in Liambo, Angola, displays high-value export crops produced and marketed with new methods learned through USAID.

By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Staff Writer

Washington — Development and agriculture, two important themes on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first official trip to Africa, are closely linked to energy resources in Angola — the engine fueling the war-torn nation’s economic growth and the source of 7 percent of U.S. energy imports.

While oil exports make up more than 90 percent of the Angolan government’s revenues, a good part of the population still lives in a countryside devastated by a 27-year-long civil war that killed 500,000 people and wrecked the agricultural sector, on which many are still dependent.

Clinton acknowledged the need to diversify Angola’s economy, which is overly dependent on oil, as she participated in the August 9 signing of an initial agreement in Luanda between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Chevron Corporation and the Cooperative League of the United States of America (an agriculture-related nongovernmental organization [NGO]) to help develop Angola’s agricultural sector.

“Nowhere is the promise of agriculture as a key to a diversified economy greater than right here in Angola,” Clinton told the gathering of officials, oil executives and NGO representatives.

With the partnership agreement, she said, “we are making a down payment on the future, the revitalization of small and medium holder farming in Angola. This $6 million investment will help raise the income of Angolans, turn back hunger and drive sustainable development. It will bolster Angola’s efforts to rebuild a once vital agricultural sector destroyed by war, which again can be a source of broad-based prosperity.”

The public/private sector partnership will boost agriculture in Angola by providing more financing, training and marketing support to farmers while strengthening agricultural schools. A goal is to return to Angola’s pre–civil war days, before 1975, when the nation was the world’s fourth-largest exporter of coffee, as well as a competitive exporter in a number of other crops.

Clinton also touched on the importance of the Chevron Corporation to Angola’s development, saying, “Let me especially thank Chevron for recognizing that it is important to give back to the countries where the natural resources come from.”

At 555,000 barrels a day, Angola is currently the sixth-largest exporter of crude oil to the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Overall, U.S. oil imports from Africa have nearly doubled since 2002. In 2006, 22 percent of all crude oil imports to the United States came from Africa, more than from the Middle East.

David Shinn, an Africa expert and former U.S. envoy to Ethiopia who teaches political science at George Washington University, told America.gov that Angola “has been an important source of U.S. oil imports for many years and is challenging Nigeria as the largest supplier in Africa to the United States.

Shinn said, “It is important, however, to take the U.S.-Angola relationship beyond oil, which totally dominates Angola's economy. Looking to the future, Angola needs to diversify.”

He added: “Angola has the potential to be a rich agricultural producer. It is a country where American agricultural technology and private investment could be profitable and lead to diversification of Angola's economy.

“The relationship with U.S. companies is close,” Shinn said, and could be “a significant factor in the nation’s economic development because “they were instrumental in developing the offshore oil resources.”

During her two-day visit in Angola, the third stop on her seven-nation trip to the continent August 4–14, Clinton also met with President José Eduardo dos Santos and Foreign Minister Assunção Afonso dos Anjos and held a roundtable discussion with members of the National Assembly.

A transcript of Clinton's remarks at the ceremony is available on America.gov.