The Angolan president arrived in Washington on Saturday to participate in the US-Africa Summit, having met on Tuesday with the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin.
For the academic dean of the National Defense University, "this is an important step" and defended that "a clear strategy of diversification of external relations can be useful for Angola".
"We, here in the United States, would like to continue helping Angola, continue to encourage Angola to stay on the right path. President Lourenço took some very important initial steps in the right direction", said the academic.
The defense economics specialist was speaking at the Angola Forum, organized by videoconference by the Royal Institute of International Relations (Chatham House) and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Foundation.
In his speech, Assis Malaquias added that Washington is concerned about the proximity between Luanda and Beijing, similarly to what happened in the past between Angola and the Soviet Union.
"There are important lessons that can be learned from the failure to fully diversify foreign relations," he emphasized, referring to the consequences for the country's development and security.
In the same panel on international relations, the former Swedish ambassador to Angola Ewa Polano said that there were already other signs of a "paradigm shift" in Angolan foreign policy by the hand of João Lourenço.
At the origin, she believes, is the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and recalled how in October Angola voted in favor of the resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the United Nations General Assembly, after having abstained in previous resolutions that condemned Russia.
This vote was preceded by a telephone conversation a few days before with the Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, the first since the beginning of the conflict, which the Angolan head of state had only discussed before with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
"I see this as a very important decision taken by President Lourenço", said the Swedish diplomat, who also highlighted Angola's distancing from China, namely attributing some large infrastructure projects to European companies or consortia.
For Ewa Polano, "there is a tendency for its decrease, this is slowly arriving, and this is very welcome for us in the European Union".
