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By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden is planning a trip to Angola in coming weeks, fulfilling an earlier promise that would make him the first U.S. head of state to visit sub-Saharan Africa since Barack Obama in 2015, three sources familiar with the plans said.
The trip, which is still being finalized, is likely to occur after the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September and before the Nov. 5 presidential election, one of the sources said.
The White House declined to comment on the trip plans.
Biden had hoped to visit Angola late last year but the trip was postponed after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October. Biden has pledged closer U.S. partnership with democracies on the African continent, as Beijing invests heavily in the region.
The Democratic president hosted Angolan President Joao Lourenco at the White House last November and raised the prospect of a visit during their Oval Office meeting. In May, he said he planned to make an official visit to Africa in February if he won the U.S. presidential election.
Biden would be the first U.S. president to visit the oil- and resource-rich African country, one of the sources said, following a first-ever visit by a U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, in September 2023.
Keen to counter China's massive investments in Africa, the U.S. has been supporting a project that links resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola's Lobito port by rail to bypass road congestion on the copper and cobalt route.
Biden, who took office in 2021, has faced some criticism for not visiting the African continent earlier in his term after hosting a U.S.-African leaders summit in Washington in December 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Africa in 2023, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken this year.
Biden's trip would come weeks before a U.S. presidential election that remains razor-tight, with recent polls showing Democratic candidate Harris virtually tied with her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, whose derogatory reference to African nations as "shithole countries" continues to reverberate in African diplomatic circles.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons and Rosalba O'Brien)
