Prince Harry meets Angola's presidential couple

Prince Harry has made an emotional visit to the Angolan city where an iconic picture was taken of Princess Diana in 1997 as she walked through a minefield.

Prince Harry meets with the President of Angola Joao Lourenco and First Lady Ana Dias Lourenco at the presidential palace in Luanda, Angola.

Prince Harry meets with the President of Angola Joao Lourenco and First Lady Ana Dias Lourenco at the presidential palace in Luanda, Angola. Source: Getty Images Europe

Prince Harry has met with Angola's presidential couple, Joao and Ana Dias Lourenco, before heading off to Malawi on the sixth day of his visit to Southern Africa.

Harry, dressed more formally than usual in a light grey suit, met the couple at the presidential palace on Saturday before visiting the Lucrecia Paim maternity hospital, where Angola's first lady has spearheaded a project focused on preventing mothers from transmitting HIV to their babies.

Rates of mother-to-baby transmission are the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and, despite Angola's low infection rate, factors such as high fertility and a young population, combined with a lack of awareness, are starting to drive up the number of infections, royal communications said.
Prince Harry arrives for an audience with President João Lourenço.
Prince Harry arrives for an audience with President João Lourenço. Source: Getty Images
His time in Angola has been an opportunity for the prince to take up the cause of his late mother Princess Diana, who 22 years ago visited the country to highlight the dangers of landmines - a remnant of the 25 years of civil strife there.

Harry visited the northern city of Huambo, where an iconic picture was taken of Princess Diana in 1997 as she walked through a minefield.

"It has been emotional retracing my mother's steps," said Prince Harry of Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris a few months after her visit to Angola.

Harry travels to Malawi for the next leg of his tour, where he will visit educational, environmental and health projects in his first trip to that country in an official capacity.

The trip includes honouring a British soldier, Mathew Talbot, who was killed in May while on an anti-poaching patrol in Liwonde National Park.

Harry will depart Malawi on Monday for Johannesburg to join his wife, Meghan and their four-month-old son Archie, who remained in South Africa to attend other events.
Prince Harryduring an audience with President Joo Loureno at the presidential palace.
Prince Harryduring an audience with President Joo Loureno at the presidential palace. Source: Getty Images Europe
Meghan was shown tying a ribbon she had signed at the site where a 19-year-old student was murdered in Cape Town last month, in a photo posted on the couple's official Instagram account.

The rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana sparked a number of protests in the country, resulting in President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelling his trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Crime statistics released earlier this month revealed that murders have increased by more than three per cent and sexual offences rose by nearly five per cent in the country at the tip of Africa.


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3 min read
Published 29 September 2019 9:34am
Updated 29 September 2019 10:09am


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