Biden hosts the Angolan president in an effort to showcase strengthened ties, as Africa go to slips

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is internet hosting Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço within the Oval Office on Thursday as he seeks to reaffirm his dedication to Africa whilst two wars eat a lot of his administration’s overseas coverage focus.

The White House assembly follows Angola’s transfer to place itself as a strategic accomplice to the United States and because it has shifted away from Russian and Chinese affect below Lourenço’s tenure. The go to comes as Biden seems set to interrupt his dedication to African leaders to go to the continent this 12 months – although senior U.S. officers have made key journeys to Africa all through 2023.

”They’re a strategic accomplice and a rising world voice on problems with peace and safety,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stated Thursday, including that the 2 leaders would talk about financial and safety cooperation in addition to regional and world points.

Lobbyists for Lourenço had petitioned Biden administration officers to arrange the assembly between the 2 leaders for months, warning that the absence of such a high-profile engagement might jeopardize Angola’s dedication to working with the U.S.

“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, in keeping with lobbyist disclosure data.

“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 per week earlier to Ambassador Molly Phee, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

The go to comes months after Biden and allies among the many Group of 20 main wealthy and growing nations unveiled a Trans-African Corridor connecting the Angolan port of Lobito with landlocked areas of the African continent: the Kananga province within the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper mining areas of Zambia. It’s a part of a worldwide infrastructure program championed by Biden that’s meant as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Much of Biden‘s recent foreign policy focus has been on Russia’s conflict in Ukraine and the combating between Israel and Hamas. Declaring that U.S. management “holds the world together,” the Democratic president informed Americans in an Oval Office deal with in October that the U.S. should deepen its help of Ukraine and Israel in the course of two vastly totally different, unpredictable and bloody wars.