Angola and the US Deepen Naval Ties at the Rabat Maritime Summit

Angola · DEFENCE

Angola US defence cooperation moved another step forward in Rabat last month, when the two navies’ commanders met to discuss modernisation and information sharing — the practical follow-through on a logistics agreement signed at the Pentagon two years ago.

Luanda. Angola sits on the Atlantic coast of a region where piracy, illegal fishing and trafficking have made maritime security a shared concern. (Photo: Internet reproduction)

What happened in Rabat

Admiral George Wikoff, who commands US Naval Forces Europe-Africa and the US Sixth Fleet, met Admiral Valentim Alberto António, commander of the Angolan Navy, on 21 July on the sidelines of the African Maritime Forces Summit. The two discussed maritime security, naval modernisation and continued cooperation in support of regional stability, according to the US Sixth Fleet and the US embassy in Luanda.

The summit itself ran from 20 to 24 July in Rabat, co-chaired by Wikoff and Moroccan officials, and drew more than 40 African nations alongside close to 20 partner countries. It was built around three themes: maritime security, regional cooperation and technological innovation.

The agreement underneath the Angola US defence cooperation

None of this is new ground. In June 2024 the two countries held their first joint defence cooperation committee at the Pentagon and signed a cooperation agreement on acquisition and cross services — an ACSA, in the jargon, which simply means each military can supply the other with fuel, spare parts, transport and other logistics and settle up afterwards. It is the plumbing that makes joint operations possible without a new negotiation every time.

Washington has been putting money behind the relationship for several years. The White House said in November 2023 that the United States had provided more than US$18 million in military assistance to Angola between 2020 and 2023; defenceWeb reports nearly US$17 million invested in military training and professionalisation programmes since 2020. Lloyd Austin’s visit in September 2023 was the first ever to Angola by a US defense secretary.

Ohio, of all places

The oddest-looking piece of the relationship is a state partnership. Under the US National Guard’s State Partnership Program, Angola is paired with Ohio — the state’s third such partner after Hungary and Serbia. The arrangement was announced in August 2025, formalised when Governor Mike DeWine and then-defence minister João Ernesto dos Santos signed at the Ohio Statehouse on 9 April 2026, and completed with a signing in Luanda on 29 June by Major General Matthew S. Woodruff, adjutant general for the State of Ohio, and Aviation General Altino Carlos José dos Santos.

Angola’s defence minister changed in the middle of all this. Dos Santos was replaced in late April 2026 by General Lúcio Gonçalves Amaral and moved to minister of state and head of the president’s military house. The stated priorities of the partnership are unglamorous and practical: professional military education, leadership development, disaster response, medical readiness, cyber and joint planning.

Why Washington is interested

Angola is the second-largest producer of liquid fuels in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria, and one of the largest US export markets on the continent. It also sits at the Atlantic end of the Lobito Corridor, the rail route that carries copper and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to the sea — the piece of infrastructure the United States has backed most heavily in Africa. A navy that can secure the approaches to Lobito is part of that bet.

Angola has also been reorienting. It spent the Cold War in the Soviet camp and much of the past two decades borrowing heavily from China. The turn toward Washington is real, but it is incremental, and it is being built out of training programmes and logistics agreements rather than base rights or large arms sales.

The Atlantic that Latin America shares

The Gulf of Guinea and Brazil’s northeast face each other across the same ocean, and the traffic between them is not all legal. Cocaine moving east from South America to West Africa and on to Europe uses the same routes and the same weak points as the illegal fishing and piracy that AMFS exists to address. Brazil’s navy runs its own exercises with West African states for exactly this reason.

For readers with commercial exposure, the practical effect is on shipping. Insurance premiums in the Gulf of Guinea have been among the highest anywhere, and they respond to whether regional navies can actually patrol. Angolan and Brazilian exporters are on opposite shores of the same problem.

What to watch next

The things worth tracking are whether the Ohio partnership produces recurring exercises rather than ceremonies, whether the next defence cooperation committee convenes in Luanda as intended, and whether Angola’s modernisation talk turns into actual procurement. So far the relationship has been long on frameworks and short on hardware.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• US Sixth Fleet — Wikoff meets Angolan navy commander
• US Embassy Luanda — the Rabat meeting
• Maroc.ma — Rabat hosts the African Maritime Forces Summit
• White House fact sheet — the US-Angola partnership
• Office of the Governor of Ohio — State Partnership Program

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