Biden makes historic first visit by US president to Angola

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THE WHITE HOUSE —

U.S. President Joe Biden is “excited” to make his first trip to the African continent next week and will first stop briefly in the small island nation of Cabo Verde before making landfall in the Southwest African nation of Angola, a top White House official told VOA Friday.

“He is excited and really looking forward to the trip,” Frances Brown, senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told VOA at the White House. “I think the president really sees this as a way to sum up all that he’s tried to put forward during this administration on our Africa strategy.”

While there, she said, he will work on three objectives: on bolstering regional security, notably in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo; on growing economic opportunities in the region; and on improving technological and scientific cooperation.

“He sees Angola as the perfect place for this,” she said.

Some analysts say the fulfillment of Biden’s vow to visit Africa — made in 2022 — is well overdue. Biden originally planned to visit Angola in October; he postponed that trip because Hurricane Milton was bearing down on the eastern United States.

“I think coming, as it does, at the very tail end of his administration, without much to, I think, really celebrate in terms of his involvement in Africa, that I think the visit will ring rather hollow,” Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

The main attraction of the short visit is a major U.S.-financed development project: the 1,300-kilometer Lobito rail corridor, which connects the mineral-rich African interior to the southwestern port. The U.S. says it has pulled together more than $4 billion in U.S. investment on the project.

When asked by VOA if Biden will attempt to discuss Angola’s many documented human rights problems, Brown repeated a refrain often voiced by Biden administration officials, saying: “he never shies away from talking about democracy and human rights issues with counterparts.”

The short stop in the island nation of Cabo Verde could be seen as a way to balance this concern, Michael Walsh, a visiting researcher at the Lasky Center of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, told VOA.

“They’re trying to, … Read More