How Chinese Development Loans ‘Captured’ Angola

The 170 carat pink diamond recovered from Lulo, Angola, on July 27, 2022. Lucapa Diamond Company via AP

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.”