Seeking to assure African leaders the region is still a priority nearly one year after he pledged to visit the continent, President Joe Biden hosted the President of Angola João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço at the White House on Thursday.
The president shifted focus from other foreign concerns consuming his attention – namely the wars in the Middle East and Europe and uneasy relations with China – for the Oval Office sit-down, praising the U.S.-Angola partnership as “more important and more impactful than ever.”
“We meet at a historic moment,” Biden said. “America is all in on Africa. We’re all in with you in Angola.”
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, a senior administration official also referred to the relationship as “historic,” highlighting the two countries’ level of engagements over the last year.
Officials specifically pointed to the Trans-African Corridor announced at September's Group of 20 Summit in India as an example of America’s commitment to the region. The global infrastructure project will connect the Angolan port of Lobito with landlocked areas of the African continent: the Kananga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper mining regions of Zambia.
“The first-of-its-kind project is the biggest U.S. rail investment in Africa ever,” Biden said during his brief remarks at the top of the meeting.
The Angolan president emerged from the sit-down telling reporters the meeting was “better than I expected.”
“This is a new page that has been turned in U.S.-Africa relations and that’s thanks to you, Mr. President,” he said to Biden earlier at the top of the meeting.
But it was one lobbyists for Lourenço had to push for, the Associated Press reported, even as the African country looks to the U.S. to help facilitate its shift away from Beijing’s influence.
“While others in southern Africa are strengthening ties to China, President Lourenço is shedding Angola’s historic relationships with China (and Russia) in favor of a new and strategic partnership with the United States. This is a fundamental shift in Angolan foreign policy,” lobbyist Robert Kapla wrote in April to Biden confidant Amos Hochstein, according to lobbyist disclosure records reported by the Associated Press.
“We are informed that if President Lourenço is unable to meet with President Biden this year, there is real risk that the positive momentum both sides have generated since 2017 will begin to lose traction,” Kapla wrote a week earlier to Ambassador Molly Phee, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
Before the meeting, a senior administration official also pointed to the United States’ partnership in solar power and in expanding 5G infrastructure in the country.
Biden pledged to visit Africa in 2023 when he hosted the continent’s leaders in Washington last December, but the White House has repeatedly declined to say when he will make the trip. There are no indications that he is set to make good on the promise before the new year.
When pressed about it by reporters before the meeting on Thursday, a senior administration official pointed to high-level engagements from other administration officials in the last year, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s trip to Angola in September which was referred to as “historic.”
Asked Thursday by a reporter if he’d visit Angola, Biden said only, “I have been there, and I will be back.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report