US President Joe Biden arrived in Angola on Tuesday for his first and only visit to Sub-Saharan Africa as president, where he will focus on a large infrastructure project that would challenge China’s investment.
Biden landed in the oil-rich, Portuguese-speaking country late Monday for a two-day visit focused on a multinational project to repair a railway line that transports minerals from inland nations to the Angolan port of Lobito for export.
In preparation for his visit, the Angolan government announced December 3 and 4 public holidays and deployed tight security across the capital, Luanda, a metropolis of over 9.5 million people.
Biden, who hands over to Donald Trump on January 20, starts his visit on Tuesday with talks with President Joao Lourenco in the capital Luanda and is due to later deliver remarks at the National Slavery Museum.
On Wednesday, he plans to fly to Lobito, an Atlantic port city some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Luanda.
The port is at the heart of the Lobito Corridor project, which has received loans from the United States, the European Union, and others to rehabilitate a key railway that connects the mineral-rich inland countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia to Lobito, from which they are exported.
