“Having Secretary of State Mike Pompeo here is a nourishment for the Angolan executive because we want to believe that his presence is also a sign of the support of President Donald Trump's administration for the program of the Government of President Joao Lourenço and, above all, for the reforms that this has been carried out”, he declared to journalists, after a meeting with the US Secretary of State, in Luanda.
These reforms, he detailed, “aim to give Angola the possibility to resume its role in the Council of Nations and thereby also attract the necessary partner and the investments it needs so that the Angolan economy gains new momentum and conditions can be created for improvement. people's lives”.
"We hope at the end of the visit that it may mean a new level in the approach of the two countries in their bilateral relations and also in their cooperation at the multilateral level", he stressed.
The minister pointed out that Pompeo's visit to Angola is already a sign of the high level of relations between the two countries, highlighting the “intensity of the discussions and the importance of their content”.
The minister also underlined that the USA and Angola are strategic partners and have recently tried to "embody this special status, with the dialogue intensifying" at the highest level".
In the field of business, he added, operators in both countries have also tried to “materialize this relationship and translate the potential for economic, technical and scientific cooperation between the two countries into projects”.
Asked about legal disputes involving US companies and Angolan officials who are running in US courts, he stressed that "there are no disputes" between the two governments, but between companies, although Angola at one point tried to help former partners trying to solve problems “to improve the business environment”.
He also pointed out that some of the largest North American companies have been in Angola for decades “and as far as we know there are no complaints”.
Angola is the second country that the head of US diplomacy visits on a tour of sub-Saharan Africa, after having been in Senegal and before going to Ethiopia, in what is the first trip by a member of the Donald Trump administration to the region. in over a year and a half.
"Angola and the United States of America maintain excellent mutually advantageous cooperation relations in several areas", highlighted the Angolan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointing out politics and diplomacy, defense and security, business sector, industry, oil, health, education, technologies and telecommunications as the main areas of Angola-USA cooperation.
