Dar es Salaam — President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Angolan President João Manuel Lourenço signed four cooperation instruments at the State House on Thursday, October 29, framing the first Angolan presidential state visit since 1979 as a push to turn liberation-era relations into practical economic links.

“We have made little progress in economic cooperation in 50 years of formal relations,” Lourenço said after their talks. “That is what we want to correct.” The leaders witnessed agreements on the transfer of sentenced persons and air services, plus memoranda on information and communications technology and meteorology. 

For President Samia, the visit was the first by an Angolan president in 47 years, since Agostinho Neto travelled to Tanzania in 1979. The two countries’ leaders and Angola’s government described it as the first and only such state visit on record during that period.

The diplomatic relationship is rooted in the liberation struggle. In a 2025 address to Angola’s National Assembly, President Samia said Tanzania had hosted Angolan freedom fighters and provided training camps, arms and safe passage during the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule.

Lourenço said that history required a new purpose. He said African countries could not meet their development aims alone, however great their natural or human resources, and urged stronger ties between African partners that had often put more emphasis on relationships with countries outside the continent.

READ MORE: Tanzania Revives Ties with Angola as Power Shifts in Southern Africa 

“Despite our good relationship, economic and trade relations are still very small,” President Samia said, announcing that Tanzania would reopen its embassy in Angola and appoint an ambassador. Her 2025 address put annual two-way trade at an average of US$2 million to US$3.5 million, while Angolan investment in Tanzania since 2014 stood at US$490,000 and had created 25 jobs.

The leaders agreed to organise a trade and investment forum to identify opportunities for businesses. That follows President Samia’s state visit to Angola from April 7 to 9, 2025, during which the two governments sought to reset economic cooperation and witnessed an investment-promotion agreement between Angola’s AIPEX and the Tanzania Investment Centre.

The new air-services agreement gives the two governments a legal framework to establish flights, but no airline or timetable was announced. President Samia said travellers between the countries currently route through Addis Ababa or South Africa, and that the aim was a direct Dar es Salaam–Luanda service to support commerce and tourism.

The leaders also discussed a longer-term rail and maritime connection between the Atlantic-facing port of Lobito and the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam. President Samia said this would link the Lobito and Central corridors, alongside the rehabilitation of TAZARA and Angola’s Benguela Railway.

That connection remains an ambition rather than a project approved at the signing ceremony. The Lobito Corridor currently spans Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, with the Zambia–Angola section a planned greenfield line at the MoU and feasibility-study stage.

READ MORE: Tanzania and Angola Sign Agreements on Defence, Investment, and Trade 

Its current programme description describes a future connection between that planned line and the existing TAZARA railway. TAZARA, which links Dar es Salaam and New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia, is separately being modernised under a 2025 concession worth more than US$1.4 billion.

The ICT and meteorology memoranda broadened the agenda beyond transport. They cover connectivity, space applications, satellite technology, weather-observation systems and exchanges of technical information, with potential uses in agriculture, logistics and forecasting.

President Samia also said the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) had begun assessing a possible partnership in Angola’s Lobito Refinery. No partnership was signed during Thursday’s meeting, and Sonangol’s latest audited accounts list the refinery among assets still under construction.

The two presidents also discussed security in eastern DRC, the Great Lakes, Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique and Sudan. Lourenço said insecurity in the Southern African Development Community and Great Lakes regions deterred investment and made it harder for countries to deliver economic improvements.

They called for continued support for peace efforts and for United Nations Security Council reform to give Africa, Latin America, and Asia greater permanent representation. President Samia also invited Angola to join her African Union campaign for zero maternal deaths, zero newborn deaths and universal childhood vaccination.