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President Biden is in Angola for the first and last trip to Africa of his presidency. Some people see this trip as a response to China, whose trade ties and investments in Africa dwarf those of the U.S. But today, Biden visited the National Slavery Museum in the capital, Luanda, to remember the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans taken from Angola to the shores of America. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reports.
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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: To fully consider how far our two countries have come in our friendship, we have to remember how we began.
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: With the Atlantic in the backdrop, President Biden evoked a dark history of the transatlantic slave trade.
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BIDEN: We hear them in the wind and the waves - young women, young men born free in the highlands in Angola only to be captured, bound and forced in a death march.
AKINWOTU: He talked about the connections between the two countries in front of an audience of officials, diplomats and the descendants of formerly enslaved people.
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BIDEN: Our people lie at the heart of the deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together.
AKINWOTU: Biden's trip to Angola, and earlier to Cabo Verde, is the first time a U.S. president has visited Africa in almost a decade. His delayed trip fulfills a promise he made to visit the continent, and he vowed to improve ties with African countries. But the timing of the visit comes a matter of weeks before he leaves office, when to many, he is at his weakest.
CAMERON HUDSON: He pledged to really elevate African importance on the global stage, to listen to African leaders when decisions of great importance were being made.
AKINWOTU: Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
HUDSON: What we have seen in reality is Africa slipping off of the list of U.S. priorities.
AKINWOTU: The cornerstone of Biden's visit to Angola is a major U.S.-backed rail project held up by officials as an example of the U.S.' growing investment in Africa's future.
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BIDEN: It's called the Lobito Corridor. We're building railroad lines from Angola to the Port of Lobito and Zambia and the DRC and, ultimately, all the way to the Atlantic - from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
AKINWOTU: The 800-mile rail line runs through mineral-rich countries in Central Africa. His trip to the Lobito Port tomorrow caps what is likely Biden's final foreign trip in office.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Lagos.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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