Angola’s long-running financial relationship with China has been built on a simple equation: Angola would repay its growing Chinese debt with oil, a strategy that became known as the Angola Model.
The strategy is faltering, however, as China has begun importing less oil from Angola and other African nations and more from Russia, the Persian Gulf and Asia. The shift has been driven, in part, by African countries’ lack of investment in new oilfields and infrastructure. Aging equipment and shrinking oilfields make the continent’s oil producers, including Angola, less reliable as exporters, according to researchers with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The shift also reflects the lopsided relationship between China and African countries. While China remains the largest export market for Angola and other African nations, Africa as a whole amounts to less than 5% of China’s imports, according to Carnegie Endowment researchers.
“The case of Angola is particularly striking,” the researchers wrote in a recent report on China’s shifting relations with African nations. In 2010, Angola was China’s second-largest oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia. By 2023, Angola had fallen to eighth place. Between 2019 and 2023, Angola’s exports to China fell 20%, according to the Carnegie report.
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