Prince Harry, Meghan shun Nigeria, visit South Africa in first Africa family tour

 

BY OUR EDITOR

Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife Meghan Markle and their 4-month-old son Archie were set Monday to kick off a 10-day visit to Africa, kick-starting in South Africa, notwithstanding the xenophobic attacks that recently rocked the country.

Nigeria, at the receiving end of South Africa’s xenophobia and Africa’s giant, does not have a place in the royal itinerary concentrated on the southern part of Africa.

“Africa (is) a region of the world that over the past two decades has been a second home to me,” Harry wrote on Instagram a few weeks before the trip, which is their first official tour as a family.

During three days together in Cape Town, South Africa, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will visit social and environmental projects and meet Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu – a prominent anti-apartheid activist – as well as faith representatives and young leaders.

News sourced from the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) shows that Harry will then travel alone to Botswana, Angola and Malawi, where he will do everything from planting trees in a natural reserve and witnessing an anti-poaching exercise to visiting HIV/AIDS projects.

An emotional highlight is expected to come in the Angolan province of Huambo, where he will visit the location of an iconic picture of Princess Diana taken at a demining site in 1997, as well as an orthopaedic centre she visited that will be renamed in her honour.

Harry will reunite with Meghan in South Africa on October 1, one day before they wrap up their trip in Johannesburg.

British media have reported that the couple could at some point consider moving to Africa, a continent they are both known to be particularly fond of.

Harry took Meghan to Botswana soon after they first met.