Joe Biden appears to fall asleep during African summit

The US president’s eyes were closed for over a minute at a leaders’ summit in Angola.

Joe Biden appeared visibly tired as he closed his eyes and rested his head during a leaders’ summit in Angola that featured several African leaders.

Footage shows Tanzania’s vice president Philip Mpango speaking in the background as the 82-year-old US president closes his eyes for up to a minute.

It’s not the first time that President Biden has made headlines for “sleepy” gaffes on both the national and international stage. In fact, he claimed that foreign travel left him so worn out that he almost “fell asleep” during his disastrous first (and last) presidential debate in 2024.

The Angola roundtable followed a packed day that included visits to a food processing factory and the Lobito port, 500km south of the capital in Luanda. Biden attended alongside his African counterparts from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and Tanzania.

The trip is part of US efforts to counter Chinese investment in Africa. This includes the development of the “Lobito Corridor,” a major railway route stretching across the continent from east to west that facilitates the transport of critical minerals from inland countries to Angola’s Atlantic port of Lobito for export, including to the United States, who have invested nearly $4 billion across the length of the corridor.

At the close of the summit, President Biden said that he was “coming back to ride on the train, all the way, from end to end.”

“I’ve ridden an awful lot on trains. I commute every day 212 miles a day on Amtrak from Washington to my hometown to Wilmington, Delaware, as a senator. And so, I like trains a lot,” he said. “So, I’m coming back. You’re stuck with me.”

His Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco, 70, called the project a “milestone”, while Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema said the railway would benefit “not just us — it’s good for Africa”.

The three-day tour marks Mr Biden’s maiden trip to Africa, alongside the first time in history that an American president has visited Angola, a former Portuguese colony once allied to the Soviet Union.

-With AFP.

Originally published as Joe Biden appears to fall asleep during African summit