Ex-Im Bank’s $2.5 billion Angola loan funds Chinese-tied firms

The Ex-Im Bank, led by Biden administration appointee Reta Jo Lewis, loaned over $900 million in June 2023 and another $1.6 billion to American company Sun Africa, which is in charge of developing solar energy plants, mini-grids, and storage and water treatment facilities in Angola.

The largest-ever Ex-Im loans were issued as part of the Biden administration’s flagship global infrastructure partnership and the China and Transformational Exports programs, which seek to support American companies competing against China. The bank touts that the financing will support over 4,700 American jobs.

Despite the bank’s statements that the financing agreement benefits American exports and jobs, the announced suppliers are foreign companies and include firms close to Angolan President João Lourenço or frequent contractors to the Chinese government, the Washington Examiner can reveal.

Sun Africa and its sister company, Urban Green Technologies, are the only seemingly American companies publicly associated with Ex-Im-backed projects in Angola. But according to 2021 Sun Africa corporate materials, the company itself stated it was founded as a joint venture between UGT and Persoil, a Nigerian oil company co-owned by Dahiru Mangal, a prominent businessman in Nigeria described as one of  “West Africa’s pre-eminent smugglers.”

The Sun Africa and Ex-Im deal’s principal announced supplier is Omatapalo, a Portuguese-Angolan company reportedly majority-owned by Luís Manuel da Fonseca Nunes, an influential member of Lourenço’s formerly Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola political party who also served on the council advising the president. He was appointed last month as the governor of the Luanda province, the leading region in the country.

Nunes is serving as Omatapalo’s chairman of the board of directors and became an official 51% shareholder of the firm in October 2017 after Lourenço came into power. That led to over $3 billion in state contracts awarded to the company, raising concerns of cronyism and political favoritism.

Trade publications reported that Omatapalo’s involvement was subject to debate at Ex-Im and the Commerce Department due to the company’s political exposure.

The company’s public import and export records obtained by the Washington Examiner show that the firm has not imported any materials from the United States, with the company sourcing materials and goods from India, Turkey, and Brazil.

“Once again U.S. soft power in a critical region for great power competition is strangled by woke internationalist mandates to remake the world in our image,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told the Washington Examiner. “The Biden administration’s strategy of dumping money into poor countries with cultural imperialist strings attached via the wasteful and corrupt EXIM bank is just perpetuating the failures of neoconservatives and liberal internationalists.”

Lee added, “What strategic gains on American interests will result from $1 billion dollar loans for green energy in Angola for example? None. It is time to make American diplomacy great again and focus on bilateral relationships that support core U.S. interests.”

One of Omatapalo’s key trading partners is Hitachi Energy, another announced supplier of Sun Africa’s development in Angola.

Sun Africa and Hitachi Energy, a Switzerland-based energy company ultimately owned by the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, announced their cooperation on the Ex-Im-financed Angola projects in 2023.

The Sun Africa-Hitachi Energy partnership was also backed by the Swedish Export Credit Corporation, which claimed Hitachi Energy’s Swedish subsidiary would provide equipment and engineering expertise for solar farms and pave the way for “other Swedish companies to supply equipment for the project.”

Hitachi Energy’s participation in the project raises further concerns due to the company’s extensive, decadeslong operations in China, where the company’s large manufacturing facilities are based. Shipping records confirm that Hitachi Energy primarily imports goods from its own manufacturing plants and companies based in China.

The company has also entered into high-profile partnerships with Chinese state-owned enterprises in the energy sector. In 2020, Hitachi Energy became the contractor to China’s largest state-owned utility company, State Grid, to construct a “super grid” connecting the entire country.

Lewis, the head of Ex-Im, was nominated by the Biden-Harris administration in 2021, prompting opposition by Republican lawmakers over her ties to pro-China groups.

Lewis’s association with China stems from her previous role as a “strategic advisor” for the U.S. Heartland China Association, which regularly partners with organizations affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, including the CCP’s United Front Work Department, China’s foreign influence arm described by President Xi Jinping as a “magic weapon.”

USHCA, whose CEO is former Democratic Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, has frequently partnered with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. U.S. State Department officials said in 2020 that CPAFFC was “tasked with co-opting subnational governments” and influencing state and local leaders to promote the Chinese government’s global agenda.

“Over two dozen U.S. equipment manufacturers and service providers are being subcontracted as part of this transaction,” an Ex-Im spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Due to business confidentiality, EXIM cannot provide more detail at this time.” 

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“These transactions, which are estimated to create thousands of U.S. jobs, are part of EXIM’s China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP), a congressionally mandated program to support U.S. exporters facing foreign competition from China,” the spokesperson added.

Adam Cortese, Sun Africa’s CEO since 2022, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.