US President Joe Biden is set to visit Angola in the coming weeks, making him the first US head of state to visit the country and the first to visit Sub-Saharan Africa since Barack Obama in 2015.
Exact dates and the itinerary are still being finalised, Reuters reports, but the trip is expected to occur after the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September and before the US elections on 5 November. Biden hosted Angolan President João Lourenço at the White House last November, discussing investment in areas including solar energy and infrastructure development, but the US leader’s original plan to visit last year was postponed after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
Biden will be the first US president to visit Angola. His predecessor and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did not visit Africa as president, infamously referring to African nations as “shithole countries” in 2018.
[See more: The US and Angola have finalised a US$1.3 billion infrastructure investment deal]
While Trump’s remark was extreme, Washington has long neglected Africa in its geopolitical strategy and is now playing catch-up, goaded by the successful economic and diplomatic partnerships that both Beijing and Moscow have made on the continent. A three-day “US-Africa Leaders Summit,” attended by delegations from 49 African countries, was a belated attempt to redress the balance.
Angola is of particular interest as part of the US “scramble for resources.” Luanda is developing the Lobito Corridor, a US$1.3 billion railway project connecting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Angolan sea port in Lobito, allowing for efficient transport of critical minerals from inland areas. This makes Biden keen to “peel away” the country from China’s influence, according to Africa expert Charlie Robertson, writing for CNBC.
While it has taken Biden most of his presidency to fulfil his promise of visiting the continent, analysts don’t expect that Washington’s engagement with Africa will increase by much, if at all, while other geopolitical priorities compete for attention. “Unless there’s peace in Gaza and Ukraine,” Robertson says, “US officials just won’t have the bandwidth.”
