Prince Harry visits landmine charity in Angola

Telegraph

16-07-2025

The Duke of Sussex has returned to Angola to continue his late mother's work in promoting landmine clearance.
Prince Harry flew from his home in California to Luanda for a two-day visit that will see him walk through a cleared minefield and deliver a speech.
It comes almost six years after the Duke returned to the spot where Diana, Princess of Wales, famously walked through an area strewn with mines.
The area is now a street in the bustling town of Huambo, with schools, shops and houses. Residents call it Princess Diana Street.
In January 1997, when the Princess visited, the nation was experiencing a brief period of peace following a two-decade civil war that had left the country contaminated by more than 15 million landmines.
Today, more than 1,000 minefields, covering an estimated 25 square miles, are still to be cleared in Angola.
The Duke has described how important it was to him to follow in his mother's footsteps.
On Tuesday, the Duke met João Lourenço, the Angolan president, alongside James Cowan, the chief executive of the Halo Trust, securing a pledge for a 'significant' three-year programme of further support.
Mr Cowan said it was 'an honour' to be granted an audience with the president to discuss the charity's ongoing demining efforts in Angola.
He said: 'We thanked him for his extraordinary dedication to and investment in the vision of a mine-free country, and he expressed his intention to continue to support our work with a further significant contract for the next three years.
'Our partnership is strengthened and renewed, and we are grateful to President Lourenço for his leadership on this critical issue.'
In September 2024, Mr Cowan said: 'Carrying on her [Princess Diana's] legacy is a responsibility that I take seriously. I think we all know how much she would want us to finish this particular job.'
The details of the Duke's trip were leaked by a tabloid newspaper shortly after he landed in Luanda.
The Halo Trust had planned to announce the visit later on Wednesday, following his various meetings and engagements.
It marked the second breach of trust within days, after specific details of a highly sensitive 'peace summit' held between senior aides working for the Duke and the King were also leaked.
The development risked jeopardising the fragile peace operation, creating yet further suspicion and distrust on both sides, when they had hoped to instigate a new period of more civil relations.
The Duke travelled alone to Luanda, from where he was due to take a series of small two-person planes to the minefields he will walk across.
It is hoped that the visit will encourage more donations from the Angolan government.
In June 2019, two months before his last visit, the local government pledged $60 million to the cause, contracting the Halo Trust to clear 153 minefields in Luengue-Luiana and Mavinga national parks.
That September, the Duke travelled to a minefield in Dirico, a remote area in the south-east, where he safely detonated a device. In Huambo, he renamed the orthopaedic centre that Princess Diana had visited in her honour.
In August 2013, the Duke made a private visit to Cuito Cuanavale in Angola with the Halo Trust, wearing the same protective gear his mother had worn on her own historic trip.
He wrote in his memoir, Spare: 'I was deeply frustrated to learn from the charity's executives and fieldworkers that the job she'd spotlighted, indeed the entire global crusade my mother had helped launch, was now stalled.
'Lack of resources, lack of resolve. This had been Mummy's most passionate cause at the end. Taking up her cause, detonating a land mine myself, made me feel closer to her, and gave me strength, and hope.'