Angola’s president is in China for an official state visit. Jose Eduardo dos Santos headed to China on Monday.
It’s his first official visit to the country in seven years.
The visit comes as Angola struggles with falling oil prices. The country is one of Africa’s top oil producers.
President Dos Santos will be meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
Beijing and Luanda have a long-standing friendship, with China extending nearly 15 billion US dollars of credit to Angola since 2004.
That included funds for major infrastructure projects. President dos Santos could seek new credit from Beijing, according to reports in the Portuguese press.
President dos Santos is leading a delegation including the ministers of defense and foreign affairs. The two leaders then held talks and witnessed the signing of agreements on trade, transport, electricity and finance.
President Xi recalled that the two countries had established strategic partnership during his visit to Angola in 2010. Since then, he said cooperation had achieved significant results and this visit would bring new momentum to the partnership.
President Xi stressed that the two countries should improve their mutual trust and support each other in choosing and improving their own path of development.
China is willing to help Angola to transform its rich natural and human resources into benefits for the people. China is also looking forward to helping Angola achieve sustainable development on its own.
He said the two countries should improve their cooperation in education, culture, sports, medicine, media and tourism.
President dos Santos agreed with President Xi’s assessment of the two countries’ relations and he said they should strengthen and expand cooperation. He called for further cooperation in areas including infrastructure, education, technology, electricity, and training
