Biden will also visit Angola in the coming weeks on his first trip to Africa of his presidency
WASHINGTON: In each of the arrangements among three sources that include details about the itinerary, President Joe Biden plans to travel to Angola in the upcoming weeks, which is fulfilling a prior promise that would be the first time an American president would be visiting the sub-Saharan region since Barack Obama in 2015.
One of the sources says the trip, in particular, holds off the date still in the making, mostly the month of September, the General Assembly of the U.N. and before the fifth day of the November 2015 presidential elections.
Without mentioning specifics, the White House also would not say anything about the arrangements for the trip.
Biden’s planned trip to Angola was scrapped because of the outbreak of the Israel Hamas war, which occurred in October 2022. The president addresses these issues as Biden is looking to strengthen the geopolitical relations of the United States with several democratic countries in Africa.
The meeting took place in the Oval Office of the White House in November, where the president of Angola, Joao Lourenco, was hosted by the Democratic president and talks of a potential visit were raised. He stated in May that if he became elected president of the United States, he would most likely be visiting Africa for presidential engagements during February.
As one of the sources noted, Biden would be the first American president to arrive at this resource- and oil-rich African country after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made his first trip there in September 2023.
The United States has been supporting a project that would build a railway to transfer cargo from the mineral rich Democratic Republic of the Congo to Lobito harbor in Angola in order to curb China’s influence and its heavy financial presence in Africa, which is clogged busily through the route of copper and cobalt.
Biden came into office in 2021 and has been criticized for not making a trip to Africa as soon as possible. The interaction of the African-American leaders that took place in Washington in December 2022 was combined with the fact that the U.S. hosted this meeting two months later. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Africa this year, and Janet Yellen and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled there in 2023.
Even weeks before Biden’s trip, the U.S. presidential race is still rather tight. Most polls show any weakness in the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s camp democratic her eyes and out there is no considerable gap between her and former president Donald Trump. This disparaging statement of the President of the United States has already prompted comments from diplomatic circles in Africa about Mr. Trump’s racist comments towards African countries as shithole countries’.
