The Trump administration on Friday announced a $99.6 million loan from the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) to Africell, the only American-owned telecommunications company operating in Africa. The financing is meant to help the firm compete with China’s Huawei, which currently holds roughly 52% of Africa’s 5G mobile data market.
EXIM said the loan would “boost the telecommunications sector in Angola and strengthen American technology leadership abroad” by allowing Africell to acquire newer American and European mobile phone technology.
Africell CEO Ziad Dalloul framed the deal as part of a broader strategic push. “Africell’s fast growth in Angola and DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), and our long-term market leadership in Sierra Leone and The Gambia demonstrate the unique benefits that high-class American technology, skills and investment can bring to Africa,” he said.
“We are pleased to be working with EXIM to introduce more trusted communications infrastructure to our operating markets,” Dalloul added. “In doing so, we are flying the flag for American technology leadership and creating secure pathways for future American and allied digital technologies to be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa, including in the Lobito Corridor region.”
Shannon Nagy Cazeau, charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy to Angola and Sao Tome and Principe, called the arrangement mutually beneficial. “The quality and results achieved through partnerships with the United States and American companies speak for themselves. This is a win for both our countries: American technology and a more prosperous, more connected Angola,” she said.
Neither official statement named China directly, but the loan fits into the administration’s ongoing “clean network” effort to strip Chinese telecom and networking equipment, particularly Huawei’s, out of American and allied infrastructure. Washington has imposed heavy sanctions on Huawei over allegations that it spies on users for Beijing. The company denies this, though Chinese law compels all companies to turn over customer data to Chinese intelligence services upon request. Huawei has also been tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance and repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
A Repeat Customer for U.S. Financing
This is not Africell’s first taxpayer-backed loan. The company, founded in 2001 with a data center in Angola, received a $100 million loan in 2018 from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, later renamed the International Development Finance Corporation. That earlier loan financed Africell’s expansion into the DRC, Gambia, and Sierra Leone — and the company paid it back three years ahead of schedule.
With Huawei’s dominant foothold in African 5G infrastructure, the new EXIM loan represents another attempt by Washington to give American firms a foothold in a market Chinese state-linked companies have largely controlled.
