Biden’s visit, scheduled for Dec. 2 through Dec. 4, will begin with a bilateral meeting with Angolan President João Lourenço in the capital of Luanda

Outgoing US President Joe Biden is headed to the southern African country of Angola this week, fulfilling a key promise in a bid to shore up ties with the continent.With the trip, Biden will finally be fulfilling a promise made in late 2022 to visit sub-Saharan Africa.

The $5 billion infrastructure project is aimed at securing critical minerals supply chains on the African continent

Angola was not chosen by chance.US President Joe Biden's first Africa trip next week will be among his final international engagements before leaving office. Biden had postponed a planned visit to Angola in October as Hurricane Milton approached the state of Florida to oversee preparations for and the response to the storm.

U.S. President Joe Biden is "excited" to make his first trip to the African continent next week and will first stop briefly in the small island nation of Cabo Verde before making landfall in the Southwest African nation of Angola, a top White House official told VOA Friday.

At stake is the US-backed Lobito Corridor project which entails building and revamping railways to connect Angola’s Lobito port to critical mineral hubs in neighboring Zambia and DR Congo. The US has helped mobilize $5 billion so far for the project.

Activists are doing all they can to ensure the US leader doesn’t give his Angolan counterpart João Lourenço a pass on the country’s troubling record of civilian abuse when he sets foot in Luanda.