U.S. President Biden visits slavery museum in Angola

Speaking of “our nation's original sin,” U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday toured a slavery museum in Angola and inspected shackles and a whip but also addressed Africa's future, saying Africans will make up one in four people by 2050 and the world's fate rests in their hands.

Biden's visit, the first to Angola by a U.S. president, is meant to promote billions of dollars of commitments to the sub-Saharan African nation for what he called the largest ever U.S. rail investment overseas.

“The United States is all in on Africa," Biden earlier Tuesday told Angolan President João Lourenço, who called Biden's visit a key turning point in U.S.-Angola relations dating back to the Cold War.

Biden will visit the coastal city of Lobito on Wednesday for a look at the corridor's Atlantic Ocean outlet. The project also has drawn financing from the European Union, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a Western-led private consortium and African banks.

It was not clear how much of the U.S. commitments had been delivered and how much will depend on the Trump administration.

Biden had promised to visit sub-Saharan Africa last year, after reviving the U.S.-Africa Summit in 2022. But the trip was delayed until this year, reinforcing a sentiment among Africans that their continent is still a low priority for Washington. The last U.S. president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015.

Biden toured Angola’s National Slavery Museum at a site that was formerly the headquarters of the Capela da Casa Grande, a 17th century temple where slaves were baptized before boarding ships to America. Angola was the departure point for an estimated 6 million enslaved people, the White House said.

Looking ahead, “I know the future runs through Angola, through Africa,” Biden said.

Speaking on a stage by the water, he said history cannot and should not be erased, and that while America was founded on the ideal of freedom and equality, “it’s abundantly clear today we have not lived up to that ideal."