On the occasion of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s visit to Angola, we celebrate the transformation and deepening of the U.S.-Angola relationship. This trip marks the first visit ever by a sitting U.S. president to the Republic of Angola, and the first visit of a U.S. president to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015.
This visit comes on the heels of a meeting in November 2023, when President Biden hosted President João Lourenço in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. In the time before and since, U.S. and Angolan counterparts have worked closely to advance both Presidents’ visions to expand impactful high-standard economic opportunities and improve global and regional security.
Together, the United States and Angola acknowledge the past horrors of slavery and its legacy, while looking forward to a bright future of continually deepening collaboration between our nations. Today, President Biden and President Lourenço will meet in Luanda at the Presidential Palace to discuss trade, investment, and infrastructure; security and stability; and deepening U.S.-Angolan cooperation.
Tomorrow, President Biden will travel to Lobito, Angola for a Summit on infrastructure investment in the region with leaders from Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, and Zambia. Information on continuing and new U.S.-Angolan partnership initiatives is provided below.
TRADE, INVESTMENT, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND DEVELOPMENT
At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2022, the United States committed to focus on partnership with Africa through investment. Advancing two-way trade and investment bolsters participation in the global economy, accelerates sustainable development, and scales innovation and entrepreneurship, resulting in increased economic opportunity for citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.
The United States and Angola are also working with other partners through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI) to enhance trans-continental connectivity from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans that enables additional commercial investment. Tomorrow, President Biden and President Lourenço will co-host a multilateral Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor Summit to further accelerate the development of this critical economic corridor.
- The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is an important U.S. initiative to enhance trade with African countries, under which Angola has benefited from trade preferences since 2004 and leveraged the annual AGOA Forum to advance trade and economic ties with the United States. In 2023, two-way U.S.-Angola trade totaled approximately $1.77 billion, making Angola the United States’ fourth largest trade partner in sub-Saharan Africa.
- In November 2024, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Angola’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce establishing the U.S.-Angola Commercial and Investment Partnership. This Partnership will formalize regular collaboration between the two governments and with U.S. and Angolan industry stakeholders to enhance commercial ties and increase the ease of doing business. Separately, the U.S. Department of Commerce is developing a Sub-Saharan Africa Rail and Port Trade Mission to Angola and South Africa in 2025 to connect U.S. companies with opportunities to meet demand for U.S. rail and port solutions in African markets. Members of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC-DBIA)—which advises the President, through the Secretary of Commerce, on ways to strengthen commercial engagement between the United States and African countries—also traveled to Angola to join President Biden for a portion of the trip.
- In February 2024, to support trade between the U.S. and Angolan agricultural sectors, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) led an Agribusiness Trade Mission to Angola. The mission supported 140 business-to-business meetings among sector leaders, with U.S. participants reporting $13.3 million in projected 12-month sales stemming from the trip.
- In October 2024, the United States and Angola signed an Open Skies Agreement to facilitate increased air connectivity and provide significant new opportunities for trade, tourism, and investment. This follows a deal announced by Boeing and Angolan flag carrier TAAG in 2023 to purchase four new 787s, increasing TAAG’s capacity for long-haul flights.
- To facilitate U.S.-Angola bilateral commercial relations in sectors such as energy, manufacturing, equipment and machinery, and aerospace and defense, the United States is connecting U.S. and African businesses with new buyers, suppliers, and investment opportunities through the Prosper Africa initiative. Since January 2021, U.S. departments and agencies in the Prosper Africa initiative have closed 12 business deals and investments in Angola with a combined value of $6.9 billion.
- Since 2022, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) has provided $2.9 billion in financing toward projects in Angola across the renewable energy, infrastructure, and telecom sectors. For example, in May 2024, EXIM signed a final $363 million loan agreement for Acrow Bridge Corporation to install bridge infrastructure connecting rural communities across Angola in support of PGI. The projects financed in Angola support an estimated 6,200 U.S.-based jobs. In 2024 alone, EXIM has issued an additional $2.7 billion in non-binding Letters of Interest across the agricultural, power, rail, health, education, and hospital sectors in Angola.
- For the past four years, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has closely supported Angola’s efforts to reduce its debt vulnerabilities through technical assistance. The program has successfully enabled the Angolan government to reprofile its domestic debt and lower interest costs. In December 2024, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide an additional $650,000 in technical assistance to support the Angola Ministry of Finance with debt and financial risk management.
LEADING GLOBALLY AND REGIONALLY TO KEEP PEOPLE SAFE AND PROMOTE THRIVING SOCIETIES
Together the United States and Angola are enhancing the security, safety, and well-being of their people by tackling shared challenges. In addition to traditional security challenges, increasingly, we face also threats such as climate change, food insecurity, and disease that do not recognize or respect national borders. Together, we are enabling more professional and accountable government actors that protect civilians, safeguard natural resources, and build more resilient health systems, and ensure no one is left behind.
- In September 2023, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin became the first U.S. Secretary of Defense to visit Angola. In June 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense hosted the inaugural Joint Angolan-American Defense Cooperation Committee (DEFCOM) at the Pentagon. During DEFCOM, representatives signed an agreement to allow the exchange of logistics goods and services between our respective militaries, which facilitates cooperation as we continue to build our growing defense partnership. Angola and the U.S. Department of Defense, with the Department of State as appropriate, are continuing to plan for cooperative work in the areas of engineering, medicine, cyber, peacekeeping, maritime security, and the development of a coast guard. The next DEFCOM meeting is planned to be held in Angola in 2025.
- In September 2024, Angola agreed to join Department of Defense’s State Partnership Program (SPP) executed by the National Guard Bureau. Through the SPP, Guard units work with partner militaries to bolster capabilities, improve interoperability, and enhance principles of responsible governance. The SPP fosters long-term relationships across all levels of society and encourages the development of economic, political, and military ties between U.S. states and partner nations. The National Guard Bureau is currently in the process of pairing Angola with a State National Guard that is well-aligned with Angola’s requirements.
- Since 2020, the United States has dedicated nearly $17 million toward training and professionalization for the Angolan military, including English language training, expanding women’s access to military education courses in the United States, and maritime security-focused training. In just the past year, the U.S. increased annual International Military Education and Training assistance to Angola from $500,000 to $600,000. The United States is also providing the Angolan Marines with eight rigid-hull inflatable boats and other critical equipment, with the final four boats scheduled to be delivered to Angola by the end of 2025.
- The United States has been proud to partner with Angola to address regional and global issues, and it remains a steadfast partner in navigating challenging and complex situations. The United States is providing more than $1 billion in additional humanitarian funding which will assist countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Angola, to respond to humanitarian crises including displacement and El Nino-induced drought.
- The United States is supporting Angola’s development of a cyber security strategy through almost $1.4 million in projects providing training and mentorship to the future cybersecurity workforce and assisting the Angolan Ministry of Defense’s creation of a cyber defense capability.
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has initiated discussions with the Angolan Ministries of Interior, Finance, and Trade on a three-year, $5 million program to bolster the two countries’ management, oversight, and accountability of their trade and travel sectors. The program would focus on modernizing information sharing, allowing the governments to interdict threats and hazards at the earliest possible point, and mitigate and monitor threats from transnational criminal organizations and other malign non-state actors.
- Between 2019 and 2023, the Treasury Department provided technical assistance to help strengthen Angolan institutions’ ability to identify, detect, and prosecute money laundering, terrorist financing, and other crimes in support of Angola’s political and economic reforms. USAID and the State Department are working with various Angolan institutions—including Parliament, the National Court of Accounts, and the Ministries of Health, Education and Finance—to build their public financial management, debt management, and anti-corruption capacity. Capacity is also being built to support Angola’s implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative standard.
- The United States and Angola are working together to combat timber trafficking through the creation of a National Forest Inventory, a critical tool for any country that seeks to conserve and manage its forest resources sustainably. The State Department, through the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), announced $750,000 in new programs in Angola to improve the identification, interdiction, and confiscation of illicit commodities. USAID will add $1.3 million from fiscal year 2023 Southern Africa regional Sustainable Landscapes resources to an existing partnership of $1.3 million to expand the partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and the Government of Angola’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forests to continue work on the forest inventory, establish a partnership for carbon market utilization, and develop a Forest Monitoring System.
- The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provides funding to support refugee assistance, as well as regional funding to UNHCR to support the nearly 56,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Angola.
- Angola is a founding member of the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, an initiative committed to the interconnected goals of advancing a peaceful, stable, prosperous, open, safe, and cooperative Atlantic as well as to conserving the Atlantic Ocean as a healthy, sustainable, and resilient resource for generations to come. To develop Angola’s capacity for ocean science research and support for ocean-based food security, the United States is collaborating with the Atlantic community to leverage support for Angola’s ocean research vessel Baia Farta. The United States and Angola have concluded a Letter of Intent to formalize collaboration, including, for example, on bringing U.S. experts to Angola to support ocean science capacity building and training through the Fulbright Specialist program. In addition, the U.S. public-private partnership with OceanX will identify opportunities for Angolan early career scientists and youth to access ocean science research, foster a new generation of ocean advocates, and collaborate on initiatives with NGOs and philanthropies, including with OceanX aboard the research vessel OceanXplorer in early 2025.
- Through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), more than 25,000 people living with HIV in Angola are receiving life-saving treatment, building efforts to reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission. Over the past two decades, the United States has invested nearly $251 million to provide HIV testing, prevention, care, and treatment services, and to strengthen public health systems through optimized laboratory services, quality data management, and supply chain security in Angola.
- Since 2006, USAID has provided nearly $415 million to address malaria through the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in Angola. In the past year, PMI distributed almost 5 million fast-acting malaria medicines and more than 9 million rapid diagnostic tests to clinics and communities to protect and treat Angolans. More than 12,000 Angolan health workers have been trained since 2023 to diagnose and treat malaria. Angola experienced a 29 percent decrease in malaria deaths in PMI-focused provinces in 2023 compared with 2020 levels.
- USAID is in the process of re-establishing a bilateral Mission in Angola to continue expanding the presence of the United States in Angola and further strengthen our emerging strategic partnership.
- The United States, in partnership with COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), donated more than 11 million safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine doses to the people of Angola.
- The United States is proud to work with Angola on bolstering African-led solutions to current and future health emergencies. In September 2024, the United States announced $500 million and one million mpox vaccine doses to support African countries to prevent and respond to the current mpox outbreak. We are delivering on that commitment, with two thirds of the more than $500 million of support to mpox preparedness and response already available and at work supporting countries in the region. All one million vaccine doses are currently available for allocation by WHO and Africa CDC based on needs and demand in the region. Angola has joined the United States as a Global Health Security partner, which will foster greater collaboration as both countries strive to protect the health, lives, and economic well-being of our citizens and people throughout the world.
CELEBRATING THE U.S.-ANGOLA RELATIONSHIP
The United States and Angola are bound by enduring historical ties and invigorated by our dynamic future. We share a commitment to reckon with the horrific history of the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people by striving to reconnect cultures and celebrating collaboration between our nations. People are at the heart of this connection. Today, there are nearly 12 million Americans of Angolan descent. These relationships—rooted in family, friendship, and community—improve and enrich our lives. They drive our cooperation, underpin our shared values, and elevate our aspirations.
- In 1619, a vessel carrying enslaved Africans who had been captured in Angola and forcibly marched over one hundred miles along a route known as the Kwanza Corridor landed in present-day Hampton, Virginia. As many as 6 million enslaved people were kidnapped from their homes and forced from Angolan shores. We are committed to learning from the horrors endured by enslaved people and honor their descendants, who continue to fight for civil rights, justice, and freedom. The United States supports Angola’s nomination of the Kwanza Corridor to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites as a way to look forward, to reconnect cultural ties, and to celebrate Angola’s richness and beauty.
- The United States is pleased to announce a grant of $229,000 to support restoration and conservation of the 1786 Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso Residence, Angola’s National Slavery Museum Building. Founded in 1977, the Museum offers programming promoting a message of harmony, humanism, and respect for human rights. The funds will go toward the restoration of the building’s exterior and interior galleries.
- The United States and Angola look forward to a future strengthened by people-to-people ties that reconnect cultures, promote dialogue, and encourage creative collaboration between our nations. In August 2024, the City of Hampton, Virginia, the Fort Monroe Authority, the U.S. National Park Service, and Project 1619, Inc. hosted the annual African Landing Day Commemoration at the future site planned to honor the lives of the enslaved Africans stolen from Angola and taken to modern-day Hampton. In September 2024, Hampton and the City of Malanje in Angola signed a Sister City agreement, which will further enshrine the deep connections between our citizens.
- The United States and Angola share a commitment to enhancing dialogue with the African Diaspora. President Biden established the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement (PAC-ADE) in December 2022. PAC-ADE members discussed this historic visit to Angola with Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President, and Director of the Office of Public Engagement Stephen Benjamin in October 2024. PAC-ADE members also traveled to Angola to join President Biden for a portion of the trip.
- The United States supports Angola’s efforts to combat corruption, enhance accountability, and institutionalize the rule of law. In October 2024, the United States and Angola agreed to schedule the next iteration of our bilateral human rights dialogue. We are collaborating on multiple human rights-focused initiatives. These efforts require advancing democratic governance and respecting human rights, including the fundamental rights to freedoms of expression, press, association, peaceful assembly, and religion or belief. The United States continues to support Angola’s commitment to reforms, including by amplifying civil society and faith-based organizations’ roles in improving the quality of elections and local decision-making. The State Department has provided $10.5 million since 2021 in support of these goals, and plans to continue providing such funding, subject to the availability of funds.
- The United States is moving forward with Angola to protect and improve democracy as the work of our time. The State Department is building on its existing governance investments with an additional $700,000 for capacity building and specialized training to lawyers engaged in human rights defense and similar fields, to strengthen the efficiency and independence of the judicial system, and for the Angolan Ombudsperson’s office to increase engagement with citizens, supporting transparency and good governance. In October 2024, the United States and Angola agreed to schedule the next iteration of our bilateral human rights dialogue.
- People-to-people ties are essential to the U.S.-Angola relationship. Since 1968, more than 1,200 Angolans have participated in U.S. Government-sponsored educational and professional exchange programs, including the Fulbright Program, the International Visitor Leadership Program, the Mandela Washington Fellowship, and the Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program, among others. Through these programs, we are reconnecting cultures, promoting dialogue, and nurturing collaboration between our nations.
- In 2024, the United States is contributing almost $140,000 to expand English-language training through the English Access Scholarship Program (Access) and the Learning is Never Too Late program. Access provides vocational English and 21st-century skills to 100 participants ages 17 to 25 in Angola. The Learning is Never Too Late program offers English and digital journalism instruction to 40 girls in Luanda. The U.S. Embassy in Luanda is also providing curriculum development training valued at $100,000 for English department faculty and conducting capacity building for English educators and university administrators.
- EducationUSA offers advising services at the U.S. Embassy in Luanda to Angolan students interested in pursuing higher education opportunities in the United States. University partnerships have strengthened capacity in higher education administration, fostered joint research efforts, created faculty exchanges, and developed new academic programs in STEM-related fields. Notably, a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley, and Agostinho Neto University has led to significant advancements in agricultural research, benefiting both institutions and their communities.
- In November 2023, Angola become the third African nation to sign the Artemis Accords, signaling its commitment to promoting the responsible use of space. The United States and Angola will continue to work together to advance a common vision of space exploration for the benefit of all humankind.
- Since 2020, the U.S. Embassy in Angola has issued more than $490,000 in grants to support initiatives that are important to the Angolan people. These grants have funded programs in entrepreneurship, English language, journalism, music, and intellectual property rights. By addressing these critical areas, the Embassy aims to empower individuals and strengthen communities throughout Angola.
The White House
Statements and Releases
December 2, 2024
